LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

Chap. Copyright No.. J___£5 

Shell 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 






391 



THE 



BLOODY SACRIFICE. 



By REV. E/ W. THAYER. 
h 
SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS. 



SPRINGFIELD, ILL.: 

H. W. Rokker Company Publishing House. 

1898. 



3 



22505 



Entered according to act of Congress, in the year 1898, by 

Eey. E. W. THAYER, 

In the office of the Librarian of Congress, Washington, D. C. 



The Library 
of Conor 

WASHINGTON 






v <m*-\ *v>-o- ty^AV ^ ^ ^^ 



PREFACE. 



The present treatise is not a learned discussion 
of the great subject of atonement; it is simply a 
scripture interpretation. No attempt is in it made 
to formulate logical propositions, or to consult 
human reason; but simply to collate the unques- 
tioned and unquestionable teachings of the word of 
God for the benefit of seekers after truth. The sub- 
ject is of the highest importance, and at present 
demands persistent indoctrination, as the tendency 
is lamentably verging towards an oversight or ignor- 
ing of the expiatory character of his death. A 
denial of the sacrificial view of his decease is fatal 
to the system of Christianity itself, as it withdraws 
the great motive force which should actuate, and does 
constrain the believing soul to loving consecration 
and untiring service.. Were the doctrine of vicarious 
atonement eliminated from the creed of the church, 
nothing would be left but a beautiful system of 
morality, destitute of power to enforce itself and 



VI 

therefore wholly impracticable. Deprived of this 
spiritual force Christianity would have little more 
influence over the life, than any other system of ap- 
proved philosophy. This doctrine of vicarious 
atonement is the corner stone and foundation of 
the whole system of Christianity, and may well be 
termed "articulus stantis vel cad en tis ecclesiae," as 
Luther described faith in a crucified Savior to be. 
No contribution is of more intrinsic value than one 
which throws a real light upon the inspired word, 
and settles its undoubted meaning. If this result 
has been attained in any degree in these pages, it 
will be a sufficient reward for all the labor expended 
upon them. A word is required respecting the 
desultory character of the work : it is a supplement 
to a volume issued in 1891; and this accounts for 
its desultoriness, and no further excuse is needed. 
The volume referred to is entitled, "Sketches from 
the Life of Jesus, Historical and Doctrinal." 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 



Page. 

The Bloody Sacrifice, its Origin and Early 

History 1 

Necessity of Atonement 19 

The Fall of Adam, and Provision of a Re- 

deemer 34 

Jesus of Nazareth, the Man 53 

Jesus Christ, the God 73 

Rejection and Death of Jesus 91 

Atonement 113 

The Resurrection of Jesus 127 

The Resurrection, the Witnesses 144 

The Resurrection of Jesus, the Vision Theory 

Examined 167 



CHAPTER I. 



The Bloody Sacrifice, Its Origin and Early 
History. 



The first act of religuous worship reported in 
the word of God, not the first actually, for wor- 
ship had been definitely instituted long before, is 
the offering of Cain and Abel. The occasion was 
probably the day when each became the head of a 
separate household; the father always assuming 
the duty of officiating in his own house. The place 
of sacrifice was the spot where "the presence of the 
Lord" was; at the eastward of Eden, before the 
flaming sword waving without hand between the 
cherubim and representing the divinity, whose in- 
finite attributes are concentrated in the fiery justice, 
which cuts off all approach of sinners to communion 
w T ith the Holy Jehovah. The offering of the two 
brothers may not have been simultaneous, time 
probably intervening. 



Cain brought the offering which Adam in his 
state of innocence had been accustomed to bring, 
signifying an entire dependence upon God for the fruits 
of the soil, and acknowledging a responsive grati- 
tude to the great giver. This had often been ac- 
cepted as the proper worship of the Most High, 
corresponding to the wave offering of the Jews, re- 
quired before men were at liberty to use the fruits 
of the soil, God signifying in some way not revealed 
to us his acceptance of the offering, not by fire 
probably. The Lord, had no respect to the offering, 
however beautifully arranged, and made no man- 
ifestation of approval, which seems to have been a 
sore disappointment to Cain. 

Abel on the other hand, when it became his duty 
to officiate as head of a new household, conformed 
to the institution established later. God demanded 
the sacrifice of a life. Among the animals to which 
man was most attached was the lamb, peculiarly 
fitted for the ceremony, created for it, and espe- 
cially designated probably. Abel brought from the 
firstlings of the flock the choicest, the perfect one. 
That it was brought as a sin-offering we are assured 
by God himself in Gen. iv:7: "If thou doest not 
well sin lieth at the door," which according to the 
rules of Hebrew grammar should have been trans- 
lated, the animal for a sin-offering lieth at the door. 
The word "chattauth," when it means sin or sin- 
offering, is always of the feminine gender. 

The word "chattauth" occurs two hundred and 
ninety-three times in the Hebrew scriptures ; but in 
this single instance only as a masculine nown, and 



must denote the animal for a sin-offering, neces- 
sarily a male; indeed, the genius of the Hebrew lan- 
guage requires that "chattauth" wherever it has 
the signification of sin or a sin-offering should be 
of the feminine gender. It can be of the masculine 
gender only when it stands for one of that sex; 
the only conceivable reason for this extraordinary 
change of gender being that it designates a male 
animal. 

; 'Kobets" also is never used to express the 
crouching of a beast in order to spring; but its 
lying down for repose. A wholly different word ex- 
presses the act of crouching. 

This change of version suggested, (the animal 
for sacrifice is lying at the door) if allowed, as it 
must be, teaches that this bloody ceremony is in no 
sense of man's devising, and asserts the very con- 
trary. If God counselled Cain to offer a lamb as 
Abel had done, it follows that HE had instituted 
the ordinance. The time when this ceremony had 
been established as accompanying all acceptable 
worship of the just and holy Jehovah, had proba- 
bly been the time of the promise of a deliverer from 
the ruin wrought by the fall. The seed of the 
woman, who should crush the serpent's head, should 
achieve his victory at the sacrifice of his own 
mortal life. 

The various steps to be taken in order to an 
acceptable offering were detailed at that time, the 
selection of a perfect animal, the imposition of 
hands while sin was being confessed, the slaughter 



of the animal, the catching of its blood, the casting 
of its flesh into the sacred fire, and the offering of 
its blood. 

Abel then laying his hand upon the head of his 
lamb confessed in words equivalent: "Behold I was 
shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother con- 
ceive me," "who can bring a clean thing out of an 
unclean? Not one." "The heart," the seat of char- 
acter, "is deceitful above all things and desperately 
wicked. Who can know it?" "Can the leopard change 
his spots?" so have I been unable to do the right 
I would; the evil that I would not I have done con- 
tinually. "Oh, wretched man that I am! who shall 
deliver me from the body of this death?" "But 
there is forgiveness with thee that thou mayest be 
feared." "Without faith it is impossible to please 
thee," "Lord I believe, help thou my unbelief." 

Confessing that the firey sword might justly de- 
stroy his life already forfeited, and praying that 
God would accept instead the life he was offering, 
he smote and killed the unresisting lamb, carefully 
catching its gushing blood. The skin was soon 
stripped from its lifeless body, which was laid upon 
the wood of the altar, on which he also poured the 
blood. This offering of the flesh and blood of the 
lamb God immediately accepted. Fire came out 
from before the Lord, by which may be understood 
that a flash of lightning from the seat of the divine 
presence, perhaps from the flaming sword, an arrow 
from the quiver of the Almighty, struck; not the 



kneeling penitent, but the substituted victim, on 
whose head sin had been laid, and kindled the wood 
consuming the sacrifice. 

1 This lightning represented the instantaneous, 
summary and condign vengeance of Almighty God, 
which he will visit upon transgressors. The fierce- 
ness of his wrath against sin is represented by the 
fiercest passion of the human soul, revenge. The 
flame was not kindled on every altar by fire from 
heaven, but this fire was not suffered to go out; 
and no other could be used in the solemnities of the 
altar. Strange fire cost the daring innovators their 
lives. It was as though every lamb, ever laid upon 
the altars during the ages of patriarchal and priestly 
service, had been consumed by lightning darted from 
the skies at every single sacrifice. 

By this ordinance "was revealed from heaven 
the wrath of God against all ungodliness and un- 
righteousness of men, who hold the truth in un- 
righteousness." This heaven-kindled flame, the fire 
of God, afterwards became the unquenchable fire of 
the Jewish altar. Its kindling is related in Lev. 
ix:24, and again at the dedication of Solomon's 
temple. It burned at each lighting for centuries un- 
extinguished, an emblem of eternal burnings. 

That this bloody sacrifice was required to be 
made frequently, perhaps weekly, perhaps daily, ap- 
pears from the coats of skies supplied to Adam and 
Eve for clothing, animals not being slaughtered for 
food until after the delude. These must have been 



the skins of beasts used for sacrifice, and their use 
by our first parents indicates the approach of the 
first winter in their experience. 

Repentance, confession and faith were the con- 
dition of pardon then, and have continued to be 
the condition ever since. Abel did not know how 
God could consistently forgive sin; but he believed, 
as Paul asserts (Heb. 11:4), that God himself would 
in the future make a bloody offering of virtue suf- 
ficient to attone for the sins of the world. This 
ceremony of bloody sacrifice has accompanied all 
acceptable worship ever since, with variations and 
amplifications in the passover and day of atone- 
ment ceremonies of the Jews. "Without shedding 
of blood" without the offering of a life 'is no 
remission" is the unqualified testimony of all the 
rites imposed upon patriachs and Jews. 

The doctrines of the imputation of sin and 
vicarious suffering by substitution of a victim, are 
as old as the promise of a Savior. In this ceremony 
lay concealed all the secrets of the divine adminis- 
tration, and every particular enjoined by heaven's 
authority has afforded light, edification and in- 
struction to some of the greatest minds that ever 
lived, and should not be overlooked and slighted by 
the church of to-day. 

It was plain to the feeblest understanding that 
the life of a dumb animal was no adequate 
substitute for a human life, and that the blood of 
bulls and of goats could never take away sin; and 
therefore that the offered victim was but a repre- 
sentative of a higher and nobler sacrifice. It was 



thus a matter of easy inference that the bloody of- 
fering represented the process by which the mighty 
deliverer predicted should conquer the great enemy 
of the race, release his captives and undo the ruin 
of the fall. 

The memory of this expected deliverer is per- 
petuated in all the mythologies of the ancient 
world; a divine character is assigned to him, while 
he is yet human, showing the ancient interpretation 
put upon the words of promise. Indeed the words 
of Eve when Cain was born may be translated: "I 
have gotten the man, the Jehovah,'' and are just as 
correctly translated thus as: "I have gotten a man 
from the Lord," the word "from" not being found in 
the original. 

If the word "chattauth" is thus understood, all 
the great facts of the gospel, all that was essential 
to be known in order to salvation, were in the 
possession of the progenitors of the race as fully as 
in ours, the divinity of the Redeemer, his conquest 
of satan, and his taking away the sins of the world 
by becoming the victim of a bloody sacrifice, and 
the possibility of salvation by faith in him, proved 
to be genuine and hearty by full confession of sin, 
and true repentance for it. 

Our first parents knew much more perhaps than 
is contained in the recorded history. Their knowl- 
edge of the evil of sin, and its dire results in this 
world as well as in the future, were much more 
affecting than that furnished by our experience; and 
their understanding of the possibility of pardon and 



8 



deliverance was as inspiring, though they knew 
less of the manner in which the deliverance was to 
be secured. 

The heathen world retained the tradition of a 
mighty deliverer better preserved than the character 
of the work by which he would secure deliverance. 

While bloody sacrifices prevailed among all the 
nations of antiquity, the significance of the rite was 
almost entirely lost; they only supposed heaven 
propitiated by it; and on extraordinary occa- 
sions made human sacrifices under the impression 
that the more costly the offering, the greater its 
virtue in placating their gods. They lost the memory 
of the attendant religious exercises the confession 
of sin, the imposition of hands, the substitution of 
the victim in the place of the penitent transgressor; 
in short they dropped out of their program all that 
related to a sense of guilt and ill desert. 

Only such as were spiritually enlightened on 
these themes so uncongenial to the natural man 
could profit by the service, or understandingly pre- 
serve and perpetuate it. To nothing is man more 
averse than to a conviction of sinfulness in the 
scripture sense, and it is not wonderful that the 
meaning of the sacrifice was lost: while the expec- 
tation of the Savior was counted the heirloom of 
the race, a hope not to be abandoned, to which the 
world cling with an increasing tenacity, as the ac- 
cumulated miseries and strifes and injustice of human 
history aggravated the despair of the suffering 



masses; no farther discovery on this most im- 
portant of all subjects was vouchsafed until the 
time of Abraham. 

The command of God to the patriarch to offer 
up his only and beloved son as a sacrifice is a con- 
firmation of the opinion that the ceremony of sac- 
rifice is a divine institution, or a direct assertion of 
the fact. The object of this strange requirement 
was to elucidate the full meaning of the bloody 
offering. Who can be expected to explain and de- 
fine the significance of the ordinance except its au- 
thor? Who else has the right to interpose a word? 
This additional light was granted in answer to 
fervent and persistent prayer, as the Savior said 
to the Jews: "Your father Abraham desired to see 
my day/' The command was given in such manner 
as to leave no uncertainty as to its giver, or as to 
its meaning. 

Instead of questioning whether a righteous God 
could command an act in itself sinful, or allowing 
doubts to trouble him, and without hesitation he 
set about obeying. He evidently felt misgivings as 
to whether Isaac would submit to the trying ordeal; 
for he gave him no intimation of the object of the 
journey, not even when the designated mountain 
was reached ; but deferred the communication to the 
last moment, which probably was the wise course. 
It is pathetic to hear the lad's inquiry as laden 
with the wood he toiled up the Golgotha, which 
another Isaac in an after age would climb, laden 
with a cross; "my father, behold the fire and the 



10 



wood, but where is the lamb?" and to hear the 
father reply, with breaking heart, "the Lord will 
provide." 

When informed at length of the divine require- 
ment, aud no time was left for hesitation, he con- 
sented, feeling the Lord's will be done; and thus 
showed that a degree of the Father's faith w^as in 
the heart of the boy, that he should so readily 
yield his life to the will of heaven. Their hearts 
beat in unison in this the supreme moment of their 
two lives. 

Then followed the binding of the victim, and laying 
of the wood upon the altar, the solemn prayer of con- 
fession and consecration which always attended a sac- 
rifice, made with souls convulsed, the fervent amen 
was spoken, and the arm was uplifted knife in hand; 
and in another instant the lifeblood would have 
spurted from the fatal gash, had not Abraham's 
arm been arrested by a voice from heaven. His 
firm intention was to slay his son; so that the 
Scripture says that he actually "offered up his only 
son." 

God was virtually saying by this requirement, 
when the great transaction typified takes place, the 
victim will be no bleeding bird or bleeding beast; 
but as you have with agony untold bound and laid 
upon the altar the clearest object you possess; so 
God will give to agonies and death the one dearest 
to him in all the universe. 

Impelled by a love that cannot be told in words 
of earth, God will lay upon the altar of justice the 
son, the darling of his delight. Men will be re- 



11 



deemed by the supreraest effort, even agonies of 
the Godhead, not of the son only, the Father must 
have participated. The throne of heaven will feel 
the shock. 

Abraham and the world were taught by this ex- 
perience two things, first that the victim on that 
great day will be one that God alone can furnish, 
and next that God himself will be the priest. The 
name of this mountain shall be henceforth called 
Jehovah-jireh; that men may ever be reminded 
that God will furnish the lamb for the sacrifice; and 
of the mighty effort of the mightier love that atones 
for human guilt. This was an advance in the knowl- 
edge of God, as well as of the redeeming work; in- 
asmuch as it conveyed the truth, that while God is 
one, there is a distinction of persons in the God- 
head, and that the Redeemer to be will be God's 
only and his equal son. 

The patriarch plainly saw the day of Christ and 
rejoiced with exceeding great joy. Was God at such 
outlay to illustrate and explain an ordinance of 
man's invention? 

When the soul of a pardoned sinner is filled with 
a sense oi the boundless mercy of Christ, and en- 
grossed with the revelation of the extent of a 
Savior's forgiveness, that God, great in all his works, 
is greater in his forgiveness of sin, he is apt to look 
upon Jesus as the fountain of everlasting love; 
while the Father seems the embodiment of the stern 
and fearful attributes of immutable justice and 
truth. He seems invested with the clouds and ter- 
rors of Sinair, and his office to be to uphold and 



12 



enforce the fiery law. This is not an attractive view,, 
and how unjust! This representation to Abraham 
places the whole thing in another light. The 
patriarch was made by a fearful experience to real- 
ize the struggle it cost to surrender to suffering and 
death an only and beloved son, and by this to judge 
of the strength of the love to men which led the Holy 
One to give his only begotten and beloved son for 
man's redemption. He not only gave his son he 
offered him up, which Abraham understood to be 
infinitely more grievous and severe. The Father 
deserves the love and trust and ineffable gratitude 
of men equally with the son, to say the least. 

The distinction of persons in the Godhead was 
more clearly revealed as time progressed. An angel 
of the Lord appeared to Moses in human form in a 
burning bush on Mount Horeb, and announced him- 
self as the 4i I am that I am;" proposing to him a 
mission to Egypt to deliver the Israelites from their 
cruel bondage. The bush, not a large and spread- 
ing tree, but a clump of clustering shrubs, repre- 
sented Israel whom the fire of oppression could not 
destroy because God was with them. Two miracles 
of menace were required to overcome the reluctance 
of the disappointed, broken-spirited old man, whose 
life, grand in its beginning, had been a total failure. 
This word (broken-spirited) is the radical and pri- 
mary meaning of the word translated (meek) in 
numbers xii:3. 

The first miracle taught the lesson that duty 
performed was a staff to support, but neglected it 
becomes a venomous serpent to pursue. The second 



13 



lesson taught him was that his whole person was liable 
to be branded with the odious and incurable dis- 
ease of leprosy, if he persisted in declining the call 
of God. 

If he obeyed the summons God would help him; 
and if the strength of nature failed, divine strength 
should sustain him; "his eye should not wax dim, 
nor his natural force be abated" for forty years of 
additional service of the most wearing description; 
and in performing it, he should be blessed with 
closer approach to God and higher experiences of 
celestial bliss than any of the race of mortals. This 
was not all promised to him on Mount Horeb, but 
granted as occasion demanded. 

This angel was the same who had appeared to 
Abraham at Mamre, and to Jacob at Peniel. 
Moses afterward talked with him face to face in the 
pillar of cloud. He showed himself to Joshua and 
to the whole congregation at Boehim. He in per- 
son appointed the judges as is related in the cases 
of Gideon and Samson, and directed the adminis- 
tration of the government, until the rejection of the 
theocracy for a worldly monarchy, which terminated 
his personal appearings. He showed himself but 
once afterwards, and that was in Nebuchadnezzar's 
furnace after the fall of the monarchy. 

He was the angel whom God sent in the pillar 
of cloud to lead the congregation to the land 
of Canaan. God said "my name is in him." Before 
him the sea had opened and swallowed their op- 
pressors; and his anger excluded the unbelieving 
generation from the promised land. He is called 



14 



"the angel of the Lord;" Isaiah 63:10 calls him 
"the angel of the presence;" Malachi 3:1 calls him 
"the angel of the covenant." This august being is 
the great actor in the books of Moses, of Joshua, 
and of the Judges. In Proverbs 8th it is said, "His 
delights were with the children of men," he even 
loved "the habitable parts of the earth" where they 
would after dwell. He seemed to love to assume 
the human form on occasions which justified his 
personal presence. He was thus continually remind 
ing the world of the great expected deliverer from 
the ruin of the fall, who though divine, should be 
in fashion as a man, and as the seed of the woman 
should crush the serpent's head. 

Prophecy had no other subject than him, in- 
spiration sang only of him. He was for the most 
part very fully described as the rejected one, the 
despised one, the abhorred one, the suffering one, 
"the man of sorrows, acquainted with grief," Three 
divine persons are spoken of in the early books, 
Jehovah God of hosts, the Angel Jehovah, and the 
Spirit Jehovah. The thought that this glorious 
angel Jehovah should become the sufferer in the 
place of sinful men, and submit to penal suffering 
for sinners, was too overwhelming to be entertained 
for a moment even by those most spiritually en- 
lightened. Nor man nor angel durst in thought 
connect him with suffering or with sin. In this 
dilemma the fiction of two Messiahs, one suffering 
the other reigning, suggested itself, and found favor 



15 



and acceptance. It was an attempt to evade the 
connection of a divine person with the consequences 
of human guilt. 

That men should be redeemed by the blood of 
Christ seems too wonderful to be believed, too good 
to be true, and yet too true to be rejected; and yet 
salvation is conditioned upon believing it with the 
heart. 

The Mosaic institutions are confessedly of divine 
authority, and in them the sin-offering holds a place, 
a large place, a principal place, occasions for the 
ceremony being multiplied exceedingly. The fire on 
the Jewish altar never went out, and the blood 
never had time thoroughly to dry. The sin-offering 
of Eden was the groundwork of the whole system. 
The same truths, the substitution of a victim in the 
place of the sinner, and the imputation of sin were 
continually taught. . 

A step in advance was made in the institution 
of the passover. In Egypt on a memorable night 
every first-born of man and beast was doomed. In 
the Israelitish houses a lamb died in the place of 
the first born, and its blood on the besprinkled door 
secured not only immunity from the impending 
plague, but an endless succession of deliverances in 
the future, thus exhibiting the imputation of the 
merits of the blood, the imputation of the right- 
eousness of Christ. 

So the ceremonies of the day of atonement were 
a fuller representation of the same truths, more ex- 
tensive, more complicated, but a divinely authorized 
expansion of the simple ceremony of the sin-offering. 



16 



The three ordinances are teaching — the first, the 
imputation of sin to a substitute for the sinner, another 
showing the imputation of the merits of the substitute 
to the sinful o'fferer. and the third describing that 
the victim after dying lives again to intercede. All 
rest on the same authority, and are divine in- 
stitutions. 

Further confirmation of its divine institution is 
derived from the fact that it stood for forty cen- 
turies unchanged as an object lesson to the world. 
It was the only acceptable worship of God from the 
offering of Abel down the whole course of time. It 
held the place of prominence in the Mosaic economy 
for fifteen hundred years. How terribly was the 
Mosaic system sustained and defended! Fifty thou- 
sand died for looking into the ark at the two tables 
of stone; one was struck dead in his tracks for 
touching it with good intent. In all the changes in 
worship made by David and Solomon incident to 
the building of the temple, not the least change in 
this sacrificial ceremony was attempted. 

It retained its prescribed form from the time of 
Abel. It was the germ and the kernel of the whole 
system of worship. It contains an epitome of the 
conditions of salvation displayed to the eye. It 
shadowed forth typically the dire, immediate and 
dreadful judgments of God against sin and sinners. 

The. fire from heaven was an emblem of the 
wrath of God ; his lightnings kindled the flame upon 
the altar which was unquenchable, consuming, 
burning for centuries, and representing his eternal 
justice, and the retributions of the future. The 



17 



vehemence of his hatred of evil-doing, "the fierce- 
ness of his anger" was thus daily exhibited. He 
"will by no means clear the guilty," or he will allow 
no crime to go unavenged. His disapproval has in 
it an energy and persistence great as the uncreated 
nature can feel. The lightnings teach this first and 
chiefly. Sin had been laid on the head of the inno- 
cent victim, and it drew the fire of heaven imme- 
diately, an eternal fire. With such vengeance will 
God visit sin. 

Another truth taught by the ordinance was that 
sin, though in its nature unpardonable, yet can by 
God's special provision be forgiven; but not with- 
out shedding of blood, not the blood of the sinner, 
however. God's altar ran all the time with the 
blood of innocence, and often was perfectly deluged 
with blood. Sin was continually confessed before it, 
and blood ran continually down it. The great 
doctrine of substitutionary punishment was contin- 
ually proclaimed by it. 

Guilt can never be transferred to a substitute; 
but punishment due to us can be endured by another 
without violating the first principles of equity. The 
lamb of the altar represented the Lamb of God. 
The blood of the Jewish lamb atoned typically; the 
blood of Jesus atones really. 

All that is necessary for the salvation of the 
soul can be learned from this ordinance. It is plain 
from the Old Testament scriptures that all the 
doctrines of the new dispensation are contained as 
strongly in the first book of the Bible as they are 

—2 



18 



in the gospel documents. They were radically con- 
nected with this bloody rite as the trunk and 
branches of a tree are with its root. 

Our earliest progenitors were as well informed 
of all that was necessary for their eternal salvation 
as we are, though they beheld the light through a 
veil, as it were. The strongest characters the world 
has seen were formed under such light as was gained 
from these emblems, of which the bloody sacrifice 
was the basis. A divine providence evidently guarded 
the ceremony, and prevented its modification in the 
slightest particular. The only modification being 
the substitution of the great brazen altar before the 
temple, no tool being used upon it, for the altar of 
the undressed rock; and that allowed by divine 
persuasion. This of itself is evidence of the divine- 
institution of the ceremony. 



19 



CHAPTER II. 



Necessity of Atonement. 



Had men sinned in their own persons as did the 
angels which "kept not their first estate/' God 
would never have permitted the offer of forgiveness 
and reconciliation to fall upon their guilty ears. A 
ransom is provided for men, and the offer of pardon 
is made to men, because they sinned in Adam, and 
inherit a nature corrupted by the act of another. 
Angels, on the contrary acting each independently 
of others and on his own separate responsibility, 
and sinning with full understanding of the conse- 
quences in defiance of heaven, fell beyond the possi- 
bility of recovery. 

The human race was constituted on an entirely 
different basis. It clusters around a single stem. 
Men are connected like the branches, twigs and 
leaves of a tree with a single trunk, and derive 
from a single root. Adam stood as the federal head 



20 



and representative of the race that was in him. 
Therefore while angels were irretrievably lost by 
their sin, God found it possible to redeem men, and 
restore them to allegiance by providing a second 
federal head and representative to the race, through 
whom all that was lost in Adam might be re- 
gained. 

Kedemption once determined on, an atonement 
became a first necessity, as the scriptures assert, 
Jno. iii:14: "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the 
wilderness, even so must the son of man be lifted 
up." Hundreds died; there was no escape from 
death for any: God, without removing the deadly 
reptiles, provided a remedy for the bitten. Sin is 
the viper that stings the soul to death. God pro- 
vides a remedy in human form — he must be lifted up 
on a cross. There is a must be in the case. He 
heals only as lifted up on a cross. Jno. xn:32: "And 
I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me." 
The drawing is conditioned upon the lifting up. 
Jno. xn:24: "Except a corn of wheat falling to the 
ground die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it briugeth 
forth much fruit." So the dying Savior will multi- 
ply fruit. Heb. n:10: "It behoved him to make the 
captain of our salvation perfect through suffering." 
Christ with all his love and power was not a perfect 
Savior until he had suffered. Acts xVn:3: "Paul 
reasoned with them out of the scriptures, opening 
and alleging that the Christ must needs have suf- 
fered and risen from the dead." The ancient scrip- 
tures, from the time of Abel in words and by types, 
declared that the coming Savior should die like the 



21 



lamb of the sin- offering. This was the thing repre- 
sented in every act of formal worship. Heb. vm:3: 
"It is of necessity that this man have somewhat 
also to offer." The order of the priesthood existed 
only on account of the prior necessity of an offer- 
ing. Jesus Christ is the only real priest in the uni- 
verse, and he is appointed because an expiatory 
offering must be made. Heb. x:ll: "Where a tes- 
tament is, there must of necessity be the death of 
the testator." Christ can give effect to his testa- 
mentary provisions only by dying. Heb. x:22: 
"Without the shedding of blood there is no remis- 
sion." The Jewish altar ran with blood often like 
a wine-press in the time of the vintage, and its fire 
was never out, proclaiming and foreshadowing the 
bloody sacrifice, which God would make. Reasons 
for this necessity, so variously expressed and im- 
plied, are not hard to find; they are drawn from 
the nature of the law of God, and from his character, 
as it is revealed in the Holy Scriptures. 

Right and wrong are such independently of the 
will of God. The distinction between moral pre- 
cepts and positive enactments conld not exist if 
God's expressed will alone rendered any duty essen- 
tially and eternally obligatory. Some things are 
right in themselves, and others may be objects of 
specific requirement binding only for a time, and 
having no permanent obligation. Such were the 
ordinances of circumcision and animal sacrifice, 
which w T ere of temporary institution, and have no 
foundation in the nature of things. 



22 



The moral law of ten commands on the con- 
trary is bottomed on the nature of God, and the 
nature of intelligent creatures, and is written on the 
heart of every spiritual being in existence, and 
stands emblazoned in starry letters on the universe 
of moving worlds, and blazes in uncreated light 
from the throne of God. It is beyond the power of 
Jehovah to destroy or change. His own nature is 
conformed to it; he is not an arbitrary being, but 
a holy being. His will eternally and unchangeably 
approves and sustains the right, his law enforces it. 

This law is dearer to him than the happiness of 
creatures or his own happiness, being the expression 
of his moral attributes. God can never change; even 
man or devil cannot of himself change his own 
character; and can God surrender his law and cease 
to be God? 

Further, the law is perfect, and the least change 
destroys it altogether. It is but a single require- 
ment — of universal disinterested love. It is one in 
such a sense that to break a single command is to 
violate the whole, and incur its fearful penaltv of 
eternal exclusion from the favor of God for the first 
offence. "If a man keep the whole law, and yet 
offend in one point, he is guilty of all." James n:10, 
and if the law giver fail to enforce it in one point, 
he abandons it altogether. The least deflection from 
the right line of duty is a change from absolute 
perfection to sin; and to show indulgence to a sin- 
gle trespass is to surrender the law forever. Placed 
as Jehovah is by nature and by right on the throne, 



23 



for him to pass by a crime without condign pun- 
ishment would be equivalent to committing it him- 
self. 

A juror or judge, who, for light reasons or any 
reasons, would pardon a criminal guilty beyond a 
reasonable doubt of crime, is as guilty as the per- 
petrator of the evil himself, and inflicts a greater 
damage upon society. Better far defective laws 
rigidly enforced than the best System of adminis- 
tration existing only on parchment. Our Savior 
himself says Matt. v:18: "Verily I say unto you, 
till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one title shall 
in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled." 
He is evidently speaking of the law of ten commands 
which is the subject of the sermon. The dot of an 
i or the cross of a t in the law has infinitely greater 
stability and permanence than the universe of mat- 
ter. The law of Sinai stands incomparably firmer 
than the laws of nature, that govern worlds and 
systems. In order to maintain perfection, deviation 
by a hair's breadth from the straight line of right 
can never be allowed. 

Civil rulers throughout Christendom have had 
great hesitation about pardoning crimes. Many a 
man has perished on the scaffold, whom the govern- 
ment would have spared, if an expedient could have 
been devised, by which the honor of the law could 
have been sustained. The circumstances of some 
have aroused deep sympathy, as for instance those 
of the lamented Andre in the war of the revolution, 
the warrant for whose execution is reported to have 
been wetted with the tears of Washington as he 



24 



signed it. Others have been so thoroughly penitent 
as to afford certain promise of good citizenship in 
future if released; but as Lord Mansfield said when 
petitions for the pardon of Dr. Dodd, executed for 
forgery in England, flooded his office: "the pardon 
of capital crime in one instance is a verdict of mur- 
der rendered against ourselves for the execution of 
all former delinquents of the same class." The law 
hanged them both amid the protestations of society. 

The majesty of law is not to be trifled with. 
The conviction of this found expression in that 
feature of an ancient government incidentally men- 
tioned in the scriptures: "the law of the Medes 
and Persians changeth not." The King himself 
could not rectify an error, or right a wrong once 
authorized and sanctioned. There is certainly wis- 
dom in the maxim. Just laws should be impartially 
administered, and inflexibly sustained. 

The law is the declaration of the moral sense of 
a nation; and shall the convictions of mortals, 
whose interests are limited to a single generation, 
possess such sanctity and command such homage, 
and shall not the law of the Most High, extending 
over a universe of worlds, and continuing through 
an eternity, be inviolable? There is a majesty about 
the code of heaven which dwarfs everything earthly 
by which it is attempted to illustrate it. It is ap- 
plicable to other races of spiritual beings than 
our own. 

God's creative work is only begun. It is true 
of the innumerable worlds existing as of our own: 
"He created it not in vain, he formed it to be in- 



25 



habited" (Is. xlv:10) by intelligent beings in an 
endless variety of organization and constitution, as 
respects bodily form and mental equipment. 

When these numberless worlds are tenanted by 
intelligent inhabitants, the empire of Jehovah will 
be practically boundless; and the human race may 
act a most conspicuous part in the grand economics 
of his government. They will be able to teach 
angels, and may serve as kings and priests to in- 
fant races yet to be created, being, on account of 
their experiences on this earth, able to utter warn- 
ings against the invasion of sin which no others 
can, and to set forth the infinite love of God as 
others cannot. 

All these races will be under one administration 
and one law, a law to which God himself is con- 
formed ; a law on which his throne is built, unal- 
terable as his being. His arm is competent to 
maintain it. He is not unworthy of the station 
which he occupies at the head of all things. 

He commands only what is for our best good 
and happiness. There is not in any life a single 
moment of pure happiness and unmixed joy until 
the soul comes into conformity with God's law. 
Infinitely better were it that the material laws 
which govern gravitation, combustion or light 
should be suspended to the material damage of 
worlds, than that moral law on which depend 
eternal peace and happiness. 

The necessity of atonement appears from the 
nature of God as made known in the scriptures. 
He is not only holy but infinitely just; his law is 



26 



the most perfect expression of justice possible. It 
demands supreme love to God our maker. He has 
not a better right to the throne on which he sits, 
than to the undivided homage, love and service of 
his creatures. 

Could a seraph from the skies "a burner" re- 
veal to men the motive which actuates him in his 
tireless service, it would be discovered that the only 
reason he could give for the love and devotion, 
which like a consuming fire are eating him up, and 
for that zeal which has so vehement a flame, would 
be that God had created him to glorify and enjoy 
him forever. Suns and worlds do not better obey 
the law of their being. Men are under the same 
obligations. God's requirement of disinterested love 
of our fellow-man is just. 

God is just not only in his requirements; he is 
just in his retributions, 

Justice is indeed a glorious attribute ; but there 
is no tenderness about it. It is necessary to sepa- 
rate from the conceptions of it all notions of mercy, 
and view it as it is properly represented among 
men, by a statue of a female holding in her left 
hand a true and impartial balance, and in her right 
a naked sword, while eyes and ears are bandaged. 
She has no eye to pity, no ear for groans or sup- 
inations ; she knows no relenting. In the fair bal- 
ance of God's law actions and thoughts and intents 
are truly weighed. Only perfection will pass the 
scrutiny. The sword that smites the delinquent will 
divide the soul and spirit, and pierce the joints and 
the marrow. 



27 



The terrible phenomena accompanying- the giv- 
ing of the law from Mount Sinai, the fire burning 
up into the midst of heaven, the mountain quaking 
greatly, the lightnings and thunderings that made 
the hearts of the congregation almost stand still, 
the earthquakes, the like of which never occurred 
elsewhere since the earth was inhabited, when 
"mountains leaped like rams, and little hills skipped 
like lambs," were the most emphatic declaration of 
the energy with which the law should be sustained, 
and every transgression of it should be avenged. 
The inflexible sternness of God's fixed purpose was 
most terribly manifested. 

The law was written afresh in the blood of Christ. 
If his prayer that the law might pass, offered with 
agonies and tears and blood, the stern and holy 
Jehovah refused to hear : what prospect then can 
there be of escape for any transgressor? To suppose 
that the divine government lacks energy is to make 
a fatal mistake. Such are the terrors of God's holi- 
ness, justice and truth that flesh and blood cannot 
see him and live. '"Our God is a consuming fire." 
Of the possible violence of fire no proper estimate 
can be made. We must wait until God kindles the 
flame that shall consume this earth, when "the ele- 
ments shall melt with fervent heat," solid mountains 
flow down like wax, and even old ocean burn. 
Water will burn with a flame of surpassing bright- 
ness and an enormous explosive force, capable of 
tearing boiler iron as though it were wet paper. 
"The heavens will pass away with a great noise" 



28 



(2 Peter iii:10), "and there was no more sea"' 
(Rev. 21:1), and fervent heat; then will be realized 
the word: "our God is a consuming fire." 

God is also true, and no attribute of his awful 
character deserves to be more glorious in the eyes 
of a deceitful race, whose first infant speech is false- 
hood, and whose whole life is a lie. Truth trans- 
parent as the uncreated light begirts his mighty 
throne, and blazes in unapproachable splendor 
around him. A sunlight sincerity envelops his whole 
character with incomparable glory. It is not easy 
for deceivers to realize the majesty and elevation of 
the great being who "cannot lie." A lie is the 
starting point of all sin, and the first taint of moral 
corruption, the first symptom of spiritual death. 
God has often shown his intense abhorrence of it in 
the speedy judgments of his providence. 

Further, he has the necessary energy, the nerve 
as men call it. How prevalent is the feeling that 
the divine government lacks energy! "Because sen- 
tence against an evil work is not executed speedily," 
men are hardened against God; but if he is capable 
of inflicting unmitigated anguish upon his own and 
only begotten son, the object of his most intense 
affection; can he hesitate to enforce a law vital to 
the continuance of his government, and to the 
happiness of his intelligent creatures? 

It must be remembered that his displeasure 
against sin is a "fierceness of anger," and his de- 
termination to punish it is humanly speaking a 
"vengeance." 



29 



Then he is supremely benevolent; this is the 
crowning glory of his nature. In no act of his ad- 
ministration has he displayed a higher degree of 
goodness than in his pursuing sin with an everlast- 
ing curse, as the only thing that can ruin and de- 
stroy an immortal spirit. 

The necessitj^ of atonement is self-evident from 
the fact that it has been made. The suffering of 
the great Kedeemer was by no means necessary in 
order to render Jehovah merciful, and incline him 
to forgive. His mercy is from everlasting to ever- 
lasting in a tenderness incapable of increase. It is 
literally infinite in its yearning solicitude; but before 
it could be gratified governmental impediments were 
to be removed ; yet his mercy triumphed over all 
obstacles. His only and his equal son became in- 
timately, inseparably and eternally identified with 
the sinning family. He took into union with his 
divinity a mortal body and a rational soul, and 
"was made in all things like unto his brethren," 
that he might become a second federal head of the 
race, and so might suffer in their stead. All other 
objects of his incarnation were secondary and inci- 
dental. This end was in his thoughts from the 
commencement of his ministry, and doubtless was 
one principal subject in his prayers continued 
through whole long nights of solitary supplication; 
as it had formed the burden of his prayer on the 
mount of transfiguration. He was beseeching that 
his humanity might pass the dreadful ordeal with- 
out "fainting, or becoming discouraged," till his 



30 



work was completed, and he had "set judgment in 
the earth." This was human nature calling for 
almighty help. 

The infinite stoop made by the son of God in 
assuming our humanity created by its first an- 
nouncement to the angelic host a silence in heaven 
for a space: nor can it be realized by mortals at 
all, until with our own eyes we behold the glories 
of the eternal throne; nor will it be fully realized 
even then: the wonder will grow forever. 

In Gethsemane the prospect seemed almqst to 
overwhelm him, so vividly was it realized, and led 
him to pray "with strong crying and tears that if 
possible the cup might pass." His prayer can be 
repeated in a fraction of a minute, yet was he on 
his knees one hour at a time for two successive 
hours; and though the night was so cool that the 
officers required a fire for their comfort, yet his 
sweat rained upon the ground so tinged with blood 
that it resembled great drops of blood. Death 
would have ensued immediately had not an angel 
been sent in answer to his petition to strengthen 
the fainting body. Such was the prayer of him 
whom God always heareth. Was it possible for that 
law to pass? Let Calvary answer. Then atonement 
was necessary. Would God sacrifice his own son 
without a dire necessity? A crisis in the divine 
government was reached. The question was shall 
it be sustained? 

The son of God, extended on the rack and put 
to the torture, declared this truth. The sin-aveng- 
ing Deity crying to that sword which had slept in 



31 



its sca,bbard for six thousand years: "Awake, O 
sword, and smite the man that is my fellow" de- 
clared it. If God's naked testimony it were mortal 
sin to disbelieve; if for our solemn conviction he has 
even affirmed some things under oath; by what 
declaration has not this great truth been certified? 
Not by words so much as by acts; not by common 
acts so much as by his conduct in an emergency 
calculated to try him to the utmost. So to speak, 
put to the torture he has sustained the statement, 
"without shedding of blood is no remission." 

Suffering is of two kinds— disciplinary and penal. 
All suffering in this life is disciplinary; of penal 
suffering we know almost nothing. All have felt 
the chastising rod of divine affliction, sometimes 
too heavy to be borne. God's sword has never 
smitten in this life. "Who knoweth the power of 
thine anger?" The sufferings of Jesus Christ were 
penal in their character. By the side of his anguish 
of soul, all the sorrows of six thousand years, in all 
the countless breasts that have heaved, and hearts 
that have ached, were joy and pastime. Let them 
all be crowded into the space of a single day, all 
the pangs of remorse, all the agony of desolation, 
and all the horrors of bereavement that were ever 
experienced, and they all are but as the drop of the 
bucket, the tears of infancy, or the transient sigh- 
ing of the dreamer. When Jesus suffered the rocks 
opened their dumb mouths, earth trembled with 
astonishment, and the sun forbore to shine, and a 
groan went up as if the final dissolution of all 
things were in progress. 



32 



The merit and virtue of the blood of the son of 
God cannot be overestimated. It has an effectual 
power to relieve the conscience and cleanse the 
heart, which can never be exhausted. One single 
coal from the altar of his offering only touched the 
lips of Isaiah, and his ''iniquity was taken away 
and his sin was purged." The slightest spray of 
that blood will turn the scarlet of sin to the white- 
ness of snow, and its deep crimson to the brightness 
of wool. Though seas and floods would fail to wash 
out the "damned spot" of guilt, a drop of blood 
divine can and will restore angelic purity. 

Probably a more guilty personage than our 
great progenitor Adam never stood upon the globe, 
indirectly chargeable with crimes other than his own 
acts; yet judging from the meagre history remain- 
ing, even he found forgiveness and cleansing. Did 
the accumulated guilt of the world rest upon a sin- 
gle head, it could be pardoned and removed; while 
the peace of angel innocence would brood over the 
wretched guilty heart. 

God's willingness to pardon and to help is as 
great as his ability. He is eagerly watching for op- 
portunity to bless and to save. (2 Chron., 11:9.) 
"For the eyes of the Lord run to and go through- 
out the whole earth to show himself strong in behalf 
of those whose heart is perfect toward him." (Is. 
66:2.) "Thus saith the Lord, the heaven is my 
throne, and the earth is my footstool; but to this 
man will I look, even to him that is poor, and of a 
contrite spii^it, and that trembleth at my word." 
He looks over the shining ranks of angels; but his 



33 



gaze is not fixed on any one of the glorious host; 
he looks over the whole body of the human race, 
and his gaze fastens intently on one. "Who is it that 
thus attracts his look, as a father looks upon a be- 
loved son, or as a lover who cannot withdraw his 
eyes from the object of his affection? It is the poor, 
trembling, contrite sinner. 



84 



CHAPTER III. 



A Sebmon. 



The Fall of Adam and the Provision of a 
Redeemer. 



And he saw that there was no man, and won- 
dered that there was no intercessor; therefore his 
arm brought salvation unto him; and his right- 
eousness, it sustained him, Is. lix:ll. 



These words seem to have described a thoroughly 
degenerate age, when hardly a faithful man could 
be found, and when no prophet was living who could 
intercede in behalf of the nation by an effectual 
prayer. Such a condition was well calculated to 
bring to mind the time when God saw that there 
was no Adam, that he had fallen from his integrity; 
and when a great silence fell upon the glorious 
heirarchies of the skies, and no voice of intercession 



35 



from earth or heaven was heard ; and when it was 
plain that God himself must devise a plan to rescue 
the lost race, or be defeated in his purpose. At this 
juncture The Wonderful, the Counsellor gave the 
counsel which restored hope to man, astonished 
the heavenly host, and opened their lips in loudest 
praise, ''Save them from going' down to the pit, for 
I have found a ransom." "1 have laid their help 
on one who is mighty." 

A few words are demanded first, setting forth 
the enormity of the transgression in Eden. Of the 
first invasion of sin into the universe no inspired 
account is given; it is known only that it made its 
entrance in the midst of the brightness of heaven's 
light, and that the form sin first assumed was pride 
begotten in the souls of a portion of its holy com- 
pany of angels, without the agency or connivance 
or collusion of the Most High in the slightest de- 
gree. It was solely the act of the creature rebelling 
against the purposes of God. 

A very plausible conjecture has been suggested 
respecting the occasion and the provocation. At 
sometime in the past eternity it is imagined that 
the whole array or angelic beings, the thrones, 
dominions, principalities and powers of every rank 
and order were summoned from all quarters of the 
boundless empire of Almighty God, in order to hear 
the announcement of his purpose and decree to bring 
into being a new race of intelligences lower than the 
angels, of a mixed nature, half brute and half angel; 
and in the course of ages to advance them above 
the whole retinue of seraphim and powers, and 



36 



even to place this inferior nature on the eternal 
throne, with all power in heaven and other worlds 
to administer according to his pleasure. 

Against this decree Lucifer, the highest creature 
ever made, with the most sublime endowments ever 
communicated, standing nearest to the steps of the 
throne itself, demurred, and a third part of the 
heavenly host sympathized with him. Pride was 
thus conceived and born, taking full possession of 
them, and transforming them into rebels, as the 
smallest amount of virus injected into the blood of 
a living animal soon degenerates its whole mass. 

When man was created, the original pair were 
placed on probation, with a single injunction to test 
their obedience and loyalty. No government accepts 
a firearm or a sabre or a ship without demanding 
a. test, a trial w r hich shall demonstrate its efficiency. 
All ranks of intelligent creatures are expected to 
undergo the test which God may prescribe. It was 
impossible to impose on our first parents a prohi- 
bition afterwards contained in the ten command- 
ments. Had God said to them "thou shalt not kill,'' 
there was no one whom either could be tempted to 
kill. Had he forbidden adultery, or theft, or false 
witness against a neighbor, such offences were im- 
possible. 

It was necessary to prescribe an entirely arbi- 
trary injunction as was done'by the command "thou 
shalt not eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge 
of good and evil ; in the day thou eatest of it thou 
shall surely die." Not that there was any especial 
virtue in the fruit of that tree; God might have 



37 



designated any other fruit tree by forbidding its 
use, or have said thou shalb not drink the water of 
a certain spring, or thou shalt not cross a certain 
boundary line, as far as we know. It was only 
needful to fix some test, by observing which the 
newly created pair might show their continued sub- 
jection to the great being who had given them a life 
like his own. 

This command did not deprive them of any- 
thing necessary for their subsistence or comfort,- 
they still had more than heart could wish; and it 
was an advertisement to them that danger could 
assail them from this quarter only. This point alone 
needed to be Vigorously guarded ; and their con- 
tinued happiness was assured, as long as this one 
and only direction was complied with. 

The trespass of Eve occurred on this wise. On 
a certain day while separat e d from her husband, 
she beheld the serpent, which from his superior 
sagacity and friendship for man was her favorite 
pet among the brute creation, eating freely of the 
fruit of the forbidden tree. Astonished at the sight 
she waited to behold his instantaneous destruction ; 
but instead, to her immeasurable surprise, he not 
only spoke to her with the voice of man, but gave 
evidence of the possession of reason like herself. 

She had thus presented to her eyes a demonstra- 
tion, as she thought, that there was an occult virtue 
in that fruit, that would if used by her elevate her 
into the rank of angel at least; angels being called 
gods. The serpent, one of the monster class (Rev. 



38 



xii:9 xx:2), boldly declared that the word of God 
was false, and insinuated that the prohibition of the 
tree was for a malignant purpose. 

In eager haste she took of the fruit and did 
eat, being thoroughly deceived by the great tempter. 
Had she waited to consult with her husband before 
the irrevocable act took place, the momentous re- 
sult might have been different; had she but prayed, 
"Our father who art in heaven, lead us not into 
temptation, but deliver us from the evil one," the 
result would certainly have been different; but her 
eagerness forbade delay, and she hasted to verify 
the words of the serpent. 

Transgression usually takes place in hot haste, 
even when it follows long deliberation; the venture 
is enormous; the unhallowed desire rises to a fever ? 
and action is immediate. Her very being must have 
been shocked at the view presented of the character 
of her great creator and benefactor; but all the ob- 
ligations, and the command and the warnings were 
forgotten in that memorable hour of temptation 
and guilt. Had she obeyed her first impulse she 
would undoubtedly have turned her back in flight. 
Safety never lies in listening to or parleying with 
the tempter, but in a look to God alone. 

The human race, however, did not fall in Eve; 
she fell as an individual. Adam's transgression may 
not have occurred on the same day or the next? 
how long time intervened is not known; but we do 
know that his act was deliberate, and done with 
his eyes open, and with full knowledge that he was 
taking a step that would implicate a race for whom 



i 



39 



there is not standing room on this globe; the step 
was taken with full understandiDg, and complete 
purpose and intent. In the geologic ages new forms 
of life appear very suddenly; and invariably the 
earliest specimens of the remains found to-day show 
a superiority of organization over their distant suc- 
cessors. Degeneration and not improvement is the 
law that governs ; a fact irreconcilable with the evo- 
lution theory. Adam was intellectually and physic- 
ally the equal of any of his ordinary descendants, 
if not their superior. 

His disobedience was more rank, virulent and 
defiant than Satan's, and he escaped Satan's doom 
only because of the yet unborn millions that were 
to proceed from him. Human nature was corrupted 
in its very fountain; his posterity sinned in him 
and fell with him. He and his descendants were ex- 
pelled from the presence of God, whose attitude to- 
wards them was represented by the fiery sword. 
This sword stood for God himself whose seat is be- 
tween the cherubim, all whose attributes are leagued 
for its expulsion and punishment. 

As federal head of the race he impressed on each 
of his descendants the very impulses which actuated 
him in his rebellion. Animal propensities took the 
ascendancy over the spiritual; he would sooner 
be separated from his God than his wife; he also 
gave full indulgence to his animal appetites in eating 
of the forbidden fruit; sexual lust, intemperance 
and gluttony assumed the throne within him ; pride 
has ever since dominated the soul of every human 
being, aspiring to become as gods— pride with all 



40 



its viperous brood envy, self-will, malice, revenge, 
etc.; disbelief of God's testimony; there is not an 
unrenewed person who believes the word of the 
Great Being who "cannot lie;" falsehood, Adam 
knew Satan's assertion "ye shall be as gods" to be 
falsehood, which Eve did not; yet he voluntarily 
chose to accept it; and thenceforth his children "go 
astray as soon as they are born speaking lies." 
What parent has not been horror stricken on hearing 
from his own beloved the lie on infantile lips ! A lie 
is an afterthought ; the truth is always in the mind, 
but the false is spoken. 

Adam was created in the image of God; but he 
begat a son in his own image; and truly such he 
was, a murderer and a vagabond, and none of his 
descendants is by nature better. "There is no dif-' 
ference for all have sinned and come short of the 
glory of God." But all these dreadful passions which 
took possession of the soul of Adam are as nothing 
in comparison with the opposition to God, and 
charges against him, and enmity which predomin- 
ated over every other feeling in his bosom, making 
him a rival of Satan in his rage against his maker. 

"There is none righteous, no, not one; there is 
none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh 
after God, they are all gone out of the way, they 
are together become unprofitable; there is none 
that doeth good, no, not one. Their throat is an 
.open sepulchre; with their tongues they have used 
deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips: whose- 
mouth is full of cursing and bitterness: their feet 
are swift to shed blood: destruction and misery are 



41 



in their ways: and the way of peace have they not 
known: there is no fear of God before their eyes." 
Rom. iii:10-15. 

This testimony of God is like the witness of 
a tender and loving parent against an erring 
child, when forced to testify against his own son 
in a court of justice. Not a word is beyond the 
truth and is rather softened in statement than ex- 
aggerated. Not a word is set down in malice. 
"God saw that there was no man" no Adam, and 
wondered (humanly speaking) that there was no 
intercessor. 

Adam could not pray; "his mouth was filled 
with cursing and bitterness." He was standing on 
the crumbling edge of perdition, ready to become a 
devil; and no breath of desire moved in his soul for 
deliverance and restoration to his Maker's favor. 
None of the glorious denizens of the world of glory 
durst intercede, mercy was not known to \>e an at- 
tribute of the Deity. His unlimited goodness was 
w T ell understood; but mercy is a quality infinitely 
beyond benevolence. The secret of the Most High 
was not suspected by the most advanced of the 
sons of light. 

In this condition of despair when hope from 
every quarter was cut off, "his arm," that is to say 
his power boundless in resources "brought salvation' 
unto him," and his justice was glorified by it, de- 
manding the provision of full satisfaction to the 
eternal law. 

It is usual to say that the cross of Christ ex- 
hibits more vividly the mercy of God; the state- 



42 



merit of the scripture is that it most strongly dis- 
plays his justice "to declare at this time his right- 
eousness," better translated his justice, "that he 
might be just, and the justifier of him that be- 
lieveth in Jesus." The three words "righteousness," 
"just" and "justifier" are all the same word in the 
Greek in different forms, and there is no reason for 
translating them by different terms. 

The atonement of Christ shows that sin is un- 
pardonable, and that no sinner, however penitent 
and humble, can be forgiven unless God in the 
transaction can be strictly and gloriously just. 
Mercy is not the darling attribute of the God head, 
"justice and judgment are the foundation of his 
throne." 

It were an immense concession for God to accept 
an atonement for human sin, if man could procure 
a substitute capable of suffering his doom, and will- 
ing to endure for him. In human contentions feuds 
implicate whole families, and descend to generations; 
and the offended party is not satisfied but with the 
blood of the guilty trespasser himself, or of his im- 
mediate heir, in case of the death of the original 
transgressor. In the human bosom retribution be- 
comes vengeance, ready to exult in the suffering of 
its enemy, and almost to drink his blood, and is 
insatiable as the grave, and in a fever of haste. 

God by permitting an atonement shows himself 
destitute entirely of the feeling of personal affront, 
and desirous solely of maintaining a firm and per- 
fect government. His dieadful threatenings against 
transgressors are not words of passion but words 



43 



of govern ment. His determination to sustain aud 
enforce his law is chnngeless as his nature, and firm 
as his throne. The substitution of Jesus Christ as 
the great sin-bearer for guilty man revealed to holy 
-angels the true inwardness of the divine nature; 
and was to them a surprise beyond all that had 
occurred during a past eternity, and as great a rev- 
elation to them as it lias been to man. On the 
plains of Bethlehem the joy inspired by the arrange- 
ment thrilled them, as though the great sacrifice 
had been made for them. 

In his original constitution man was a com- 
pound of brute and angel; by his sin he became a 
mixture of beast and devil and in the fearful lan- 
guage of the scripture a "fool:" in his intellect a 
fool, in his appetites a beast, in his passions a devil. 

He comes into this world in which to angel 
eyes God is revealed almost as clearly as he is in 
the world of glory, "the whole earth is full of his 
glory," shown in the wonderful combinations of 
beneficent design, and beautiful adaptations for the 
comfort of living beings, where every spear of grass 
points to him, every drop of water proclaims him, 
every ray of light reveals him, and considering it 
all says in his heart "there is no God.'' He is 
"a fool." 

Animalism ru^es him as it does the beast. His 
passions are sufficient to make a hell. He is a devil 
in his opposition to God and enmity against him. 
All this sad and terrible arraignment has been 
demonstrated bv facts abundant. 



44 



What has been the history of the race? In ten 
generations from the beginning 'God saw that the 
wickedness of man on the earth was great/' that 
it was "full of violence and blood," and "it re- 
pented the Lord that he had made man on the 
earth, and it grieved him at his heart." All their 
other crimes were light in comparison with their op- 
position to God. A season of revival is indeed 
recorded, and of the striving of the Holy Spirit, 
when "men began to call on the name of the Lord ;" 
but by the tenth generation the knowledge of God 
was lost, there being but a single family that con- 
tinued to worship him. As for the remainder, "they 
had all gone out of the way, they had together be- 
come unprofitable," and it became necessary to 
sweep the earth with the besom of destruction, and 
begin the race anew. 

How was it after the flood? a very meagre his- 
tory of events occurring before the call of Abraham 
is left; but when men multiplied on the earth again,, 
their first great effort was a general conspiracy 
against the Most High God, in which the whole 
population were eagerly interested. Very little is 
known about the tower of Babel except that it 
was an expression of resistance to God, and defiance 
to him. The Lord had bound himself by promise 
never to destroy the earth and its inhabitants 
again by flood; and it became necessary to adopt 
an expedient of another kind entirely, in order to 
defeat their purpose. When their scheme became a 
failure, and they were compelled to scatter to differ- 
ent portions of the globe, they soon forgot the 



45 



mighty maker of heaven and earth, and with one 
•consent rushed into idolatry, worshipping every 
thing but the one living and true God. All sins 
were trivial and inconsiderable in comparison with 
this monster evil, the sum of all follies and the 
mother of all abominations. 

Idolatry, at first satisfied with the w 7 orship of 
the heavenly bodies and the forces of nature, grad- 
ually became more and more corrupt and debased, 
until nothing was too mean and vile for man to 
worship. Idolatry ended in the deifying of the baser 
passions of humanity, and soon became the worship 
of devils. God was first ignored, then forgotten, 
and soon every trace of the real knowledge of him 
was lost, and he was blotted from the memory of 
his own creatures utterly. No error or delusion has 
ever held the human mind with such tenacity: no 
reasoning, no discipline, no demonstation has been 
able to dislodge it. 

Did the terrible experiences of Egypt in the days 
of Moses, the ten plagues and the devouring sea 
convince the Egyptians of the being of the one liv- 
ing and true God? They indeed learned that Jeho- 
vah was a mighty God; but not the one only liv- 
ing and true God. Did the wonders wrought in 
Babylon in the days of Nebuchadnezzar produce 
any lasting impression of Jehovah's being and 
power? The grandson of the old King in that very 
palace called for the golden vessels dedicated to the 
worship of Jehovah; and himself and his lords and 
ladies drank wine out of them, and praised the gods 
of gold and silver and wood and stone. Did the 



46 



terrific scenes at Mount Sinai convince the Israelites 
that there was no other god than their own Jeho- 
vah? They worshipped other gods , at intervals 
through the wilderness, (Acts 7:42) and relapsed 
continually into the worship of them, after being 
settled in the land of promise. 

A spell was on the world that could not easily 
be broken. Men "were mad upon their idols. " 
Never did the soul of man cling so stubbornly to 
any conviction. The highest grade of civilization 
made no difference: civilized and savage alike agreed 
in this. If there is one thing about which all the 
inhabitants of the earth have concurred without a 
dissent, it has been the worship of idols. Even 
Socrates, a believer in one great artificer of nature, 
with his latest breath acknowledged and worshiped 
an idol; and Cicero, the champion of the unanswer- 
able Platonic argument from design manifest in the 
works of creation for the existance and agency of 
one only living God, since so fully developed and 
further illustrated in Paley's Natural Theology, 
lived and died an idolater. 

The great author of nature seemed too distant, 
too exalted: subordinate deities were required nearer 
man, and more in sympathy with human life; just 
as the papist now must have his patron saints and 
immaculate virgin, and for the same reason. 

The date of the advent of Jesus Christ was as 
early in the history of the race as it could possibly 
have been fixed. Not only did the honor of God 
described in the second command forbid its earlier, 
occurrence, a condition of receptivity on the part 



47 



of a considerable portion of the race was also re- 
quired. Had his appearance taken place earlier 
Christianity might have been strangled in its cradle- 
He came as soon as a foothold could be secured for 
his religion, ensuring its perpetuation without a 
break. The advent was not needlessly delayed a 
day. He came when idolatry had at last begun to 
lose its hold, and was demonstrating its own ab- 
surdity. 

God not only consented to an atonement by 
substitution; it was necessary that he should also 
furnish the substitute. There was a chapter in the 
history of the father of the faithful which evidently 
had a meaning deeper than the superficial one. 

He had intently considered all the required par- 
ticulars of the ordinance of bloody sacrifice with irre- 
pressible desire to learn all that was contained and 
implied in the ceremony; and had made it a subject 
of especial prayer that its teachings might be 
opened to his comprehension. "He desired to see 
the day of the Christ" our Savior tells us, and "he 
saw it and was glad." 

In order to show him the full meaning of the 
sacrifice, God demanded his only son. The willing- 
ness of the patriarch to comply, and his faith could 
have been equally well tested, had God commissioned 
disease to snatch away his idol. Opportunity would 
have been afforded for the exercise of every chris- 
tian grace, as certainly as it was in the call to make 
a burnt offering of him. But this was the explicit 
and unmistakable requirement. No room was left 
to doubt the meaning of the command. 



48 



Why should this particular aud mysterious mode 
of surrendering his child be enjoined upon the aged 
patriarch? God by the command was saying in 
effect you prize and actually love the little lamb of 
the altar, you feel the blow that pierces it, its flow- 
ing bood sends a shock through your soul; but 
know that when the great event typified occurs, a 
victim infinitely more precious and dear will lie upon 
the altar. Coming ages will reveal the significance 
of your offering. 

God required of Abraham to lay upon the altar 
the dearest object he possessed. He is called his 
only son, because his love for Ishmael was weak 
compared with his affection for Isaac. He had 
waited for his birth thirty years which, when the 
promise was first made, was a possible thing; waited 
until old age had withered and dried up his life, 
and the birth of a son had become an impossibility 
in the course of nature. His most fervent prayers 
and unyielding faith had centered about the ex- 
pected son for long, weary years. 

Jacob did not more tenderly love his Joseph. 
When he was taken away and his friends and chil- 
dren essayed to comfort him over the loss, he re- 
fused to be comforted, and said: "I will go to the 
grave mourning for my son," the feeling of thou- 
sands of bereaved parents since. The wound is never 
healed in this life. Years afterwards ''the sore ran 
in the night and ceased not." 

Who can tell in words David's love for his un- 
grateful, erring Absalom? His crown and kingdom 
seemed worthless without him. There is not a 



49 



stronger, purer passion left in the apostate heart 
of man than love for his offspring. For them he 
cheerfully endures any toil or hardship. The sight 
of their suffering is more grievous to him than his 
own can be; and the ingenuity of sin never devised 
keener torment than forcing a parent to look upon 
the agonies of a child which he is unable to relieve. 
His father's heart was bound up in the lad. How 
terrible was the command issued ! It was not give 
up your son for another to offer, not give him up 
for God to smite with fatal sickness; but let your 
hand be upon him. Take him, bind him hand and 
foot,, and lay him upon the wood of the altar 
after the last embrace; and reach forth thy hand 
and take the knife, and slay thy son. Heed not his 
anxious entreaties, his quivering flesh, nor his flow- 
ing blood ; but smite again, and feel for his heart 
utterly to stop its beating. Then kindle the wood 
with the sacred fire, which you will have brought 
along, and watch the dear remains till they have 
literally become ashes to ashes and dust to dust. 

Abraham was spared the shocking ordeal. Why 
then had the sacrifice been required? It was to teach 
him and the world the tremendous import of the 
simple sacrifice. 

The future victim would be one whom God and 
God alone could provide. This was the meaning of 
the "Jehovah jireh." He is called the lamb of God as 
being provided by him. The highest creature is not 
adequate to the office. The frown of God would 
shrink him into his original nothingness ; how then 

—4 



50 



could he endure his curse? The standing of the 
substitute must be as high as the law he seeks to 
honor, he must be above all law; in one word he 
must be divine. God himself must bring to the 
altar the one object of his undivided affection, the 
idol of his heart, his other self. So Isaac was worthy 
of the doting fondness of his idolizing parent re- 
turning love for love. 

The bond of mutual affection between the un- 
created three is not a matter within the grasp of 
human or superhuman thought. Amazing as is the 
mercy of God when in man's default to obtain a 
friend and substitute to bear his doom, God himself 
said: "Spare them from going down to the pit, for 
I have found a ransom," I have laid their help on 
one who is mighty," the story is not half told yet. 

What Abraham was released from doing, God 
himself did ; he offered up his own only beloved son. 
He not only gave him up to the altar, himself be- 
came the priest, the executioner. Abraham was 
made by the most painful experience to realize what 
was meant by God's exacting the penalty of trans- 
gression from his own son. 

Sacrifice had to him ever afterwards a meaning 
which it never had before. He never henceforth 
brought his lamb to the altar without being pen- 
etrated with the sense of those truths, which give 
the gospel its power to convict and renew. That 
the sin of man should require so costly a sacrifice, 
and exact so terrible suffering from the Holy One, 
and demand the united energies of all the persons 



51 



of the Trinity for its extirpation is the great truth, 
which when apprehended overwhelms the human 
mind with conviction, and yet heals its wounds and 
binds up its bruises. 

Religion has in all ages been one and the same 
in its fundamental truths, one and the same in its 
condition required, one and the same in its regen- 
erating efficacy. Belief in a Savior to come, in a 
"Redeemer who liveth and shall stand at the latter 
day upon the earth," produced characters as strong 
as are found under the full light of the gospel. 

In every bloody sacrifice from the time of Abel 
God and man both participated in the offering; 
each had his assigned part in the ceremony. Man 
prepared the victim and laid it upon the altar of 
unhewn stones, emblem of the eternal uncreated One. 
God sent the fire which consumed the offering. 

Jesus was hung upon the cross by men who 
could inflict bodily pain and no more; God made 
"his soul an offering for sin." His soul was as it 
were crucified, and gave signs of anguish the like of 
which earth has never seen. These were the suffer- 
ings which literally broke his heart, and spilled the 
last drop of its blood. He did not die by the cross 
nor by nervous exhaustion, nor anything that 
man inflicted; but by the frown and curse of God. 
"It was not possible that he should be holden of 
death;"" it was equally impossible that he should 
become its prey; death had no dominion over him. 
All the forces in the universe in concerted action 
could not have effected his death. It was the same 



52 



mysterious agency that made him sweat blood in 
Gethsemane which by intensified pressure overcame 
his life. The hand of God was upon him, the justice 
that rules the universe was exacting the penalty of 
human sin, the fiery sword of Eden was drunk with 
his blood. 



53 



CHAPTER IY. 



Jesus of Nazareth. Tbe Man. 



A greater curiosity has perhaps never been felt 
about any subject than the personal appearance of 
Jesus of Nazareth. Not a line of contemporary his- 
tory remains for the information of the world, or a 
single reliable tradition to guide in forming an im- 
agination of what he was like. The ascetic age con- 
ceived of him as ill-favored and unsightly to the 
verge of deformity. And this opinion held for cen- 
turies, the outgrowth of the age. The more modern 
view regards him as having been uncommonly at- 
tractive iu person. For neither conception is there 
certain foundation ; yet is there a shade of evidence 
for the latter understanding. 

Moses was an all-around type of him. Adam is in the 
scripture described as a type of him in one particular, 
that of headship of the race ; David was also a type 



54 



in respect to his kingship ; but Moses in every par- 
ticular of his life had a history which corresponded 
with and represented that of the Messiah. 

He was like him in the perils of his infancy ; the 
sword of a king pursued him up to three months 
of age; both at maturity rejected a throne, Moses 
refusing the royalty in the mightiest kingdom of 
the earth; Jesus also left a throne; Moses was re- 
jected by the people whom he aspired to deliver, as 
was his great anti-type; yet God made him king 
in Jeshurun, and mediator; thus representing the 
triumph of the Christ ; in executing his trust he at- 
tained a sublime elevation of intercession, a brief 
picture of his master's unchanging love for man; 
he received and communicated the eternal law; he 
introduced a new dispensation ; in which particulars 
he also typified him; his body after being buried 
ascended to heaven; as he appeared in bodily form 
on the Mount of Transfiguration in company with 
Elias. 

The work wrought by him in delivering Israel 
from Egypt, in spite of the almost demoniac stub- 
bornness of its king, is a beautiful representation 
of the work of the mighty conqueror of hearts, in 
his rescue of a soul from the power of the great 
destroyer; and his miracles in the wilderness are 
each of them typical of some mighty work of Jesus. 
He opened the sea, as Jesus walked upon its boist- 
erous waves; fed the people with bread from heaven, 
as Jesus fed the multitudes ; brought water out of 
the rock for them, as Jesus changed water into 
wine; gave them the law; was transfigured before 



55 



them ; led them through the wilderness. The sim- 
ilarity of events in his life to those in his master's 
history is perfect and remarkable. 

Stephen in Acts vii: tells us that Moses as a 
babe was "exceeding fair," or literally translated 
"fair or beautiful to God,'' which is the highest 
superlative known to a Hebrew, exquisitely beauti- 
ful in modern speech, or as Paul says he was "a 
proper child," i. e. a "beautifully" perfect child,, 
using Stephen's word to describe him. His beauty 
saved his life. 

When the childless daughter of an old king, who 
longed for male issue to perpetuate his dynasty,, 
but longed in vain, first saw him, she adopted him 
in her heart, which adoption was eagerly ratified 
by the father and sovereign. This fact in the his- 
tory of Moses lends color to the supposition that 
Jesus also was exquisitely beautiful, in countenance- 
and in form and carriage. He may have been more- 
feminine in aspect than* masculine, as he derived, 
constitution and appearance wholly from the moth- 
er's side. At all events he grew up the beau ideal 
of manly beauty: "Thou art fairer than the chil- 
dren of men, grace is poured into thy lips," Ps.xlv:2 ; 
grace of manner and a charm and fascination of 
address were added, with a sublime self-possession, 
and a serenity of composure never attained by sin- 
ful mortals. 

The sketch given of his childhood is the briefest,. 
given apparently for no other reason than to show 
that he took not only a human body, but a 
rational soul capable of growth and advance in 



56 



knowledge, and moved by all the sinless emotions, 
sentiments and moods of our nature. "He was 
made in all tilings like unto his brethren." 

The form of the fourth person in his furnace 
Nebuchadnezzar saw plainly, undoubtedly a perfect 
image of the man who afterwards "suffered under 
Pontius Pilate." His form w T as beautiful and majestic 
beyond description. 

He was superior to all those influences which 
ordinarily mould human character, and make the 
man. The atmosphere of earth is poisoned with 
falsehood, deceit, profanity, slander, hatred and all 
-conceivable evil example, and exerts a magic power. 
€hildras chameleon-like assume the color of their 
surroundings. On him all this baleful environment 
had no deteriorating effect. The venom found no 
lodgement in him. 

He was not the product of Judaism. No man 
can rise much above the age in which he lives. The 
spirit of the age is the formative force which exerts 
a supreme control over the individual. The heroic 
•age found its full expression in Alexander the Great, 
a character that can never be reproduced, because 
the age which shaped him has forever passed. So 
the age of chivalry formed the illustrious chevalier 
Bayard a knight "saus peur et saus reproche," whose 
like will never be seen again, because the age of chivalry 
has passed, and is gone like clouds never to return. 

The spirit of Judaism in its last stage had an 
intensity of fervor unparalleled. The sentiments of 
patriotism and religion coupled with the proverbial 
stubbornness of a disappointed and almost despair- 



57 



Ing people, combined with the expectations which 
their holy books warranted, produced a condition of 
chronic inflammation of temper. 

This tender plant grew up in an atmosphere 
surcharged with poison ; as a green sprout out of 
a dry ground, Is. liii:2; the high conceit of his race 
was paralleled only by the fierceness of their con- 
tempt of the Gentiles. He was the very antipodes 
of Judaism. He had absorbed none of its virus. 

Family training and education had nothing to 
do with the formation of his character. How deeply 
his mother's relatives were tinctured with the 
offensive characteristics of their nation can be seen 
in the prophecy of Zecharias. 

His understanding of the scriptures was not de- 
rived from any foreign source. It seems to have 
been the common opinion that he had received no 
school training, which was undoubtedly true. "How 
knoweth this man writings having never learned?" 
His knowledge was not acquired, the development 
was from within. He was the only child of the 
family; his mother would never have been com- 
mitted to the care of John if she had sons and 
daughters beside Jesus. As the human faculties 
expanded to receive, they were flooded with light, 
not of earthly origin. Where the sun shines tapers 
are not needed, nor could they indeed appear. 

At his baptism by John a great change in his 
personality and condition was inaugurated. The 
influences of the Holy Spirit affected his humanity 
only. The human soul is capable of ever increas- 
ing, indefinite and everlasting expansion. This en- 
largement occurred instantaneously, by the omni- 



58 



potent agency of the third divine person, accom- 
panying the administration of the ordinance. His 
entire being became a holy temple for the indwell- 
ing divinity, a fit vehicle for its manifestation. Its 
capacious powers became sufficient for the full com- 
prehension of the purposes of the Godhead, and 
for the lucid declaration of his whole will, in the 
shape which it will retain to the end of time. Noth- 
ing in the divine administration was concealed from 
his view ; not the day and the hour of the final dis- 
solution of present things, which "no man, no, not 
the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son" 
were commissioned to "make known, but the 
Father." The divine nature being immutable and 
incapable of an abridgement of its capacities for 
the briefest space, and the humanity being mature 
and in perfect union, Jesus must have known all 
that was knowable. His survey was broad as the 
universe, and wide as eternity. The secret things 
of the Most High were naked and open to his vision. 
"The Father giveth not the spirit by measure 
unto him" the unmeasured powers of the omniscient 
spirit, and its omnipotent energies were communi- 
cated to him "the fullness of the Godhead." As 
Isaiah foretold the seven-fold spirit rested on 
him "the spirit of the Lord, the spirit of wis- 
dom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and 
might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of 
the Lord," Is. xi:2, "the seven lamps of fire" of the 
book of revelation. Rev. iv:5. Nothing of wisdom 
or of power was reserved from his humanity. Our 
nature is so complete a miniature of the divine as 
to render a perfect union possible. 



59 



In his supreme exaltation he is still human, still 
capable of the most entire sympathy with man. He 
realizes the difficulties, the sorrows, the struggles of 
every human being, and his heart beats in unison. 
How he sympathized with Martha and Mary in their 
great affliction, weeping with them ! How tenderly 
he sympathized with Peter after his great sin ! How 
he wept over Jerusalem ! He has such a fellow feel- 
ing w 7 ith every member of the family of man. He 
is the great sympathizer feeling our griefs as his 
own. He delighted to call himself the son of man. 

He went forth a faultless model of the highest 
spirituality, purity and affection conceivable. He 
looked like a messenger from a better world, and 
from the great Father. Some said that he was John 
the Baptist risen from the dead, some thought him 
Jeremiah the weeping prophet risen, on account 
his visible sympathy; others thought him one of 
the old prophets returned from the tomb. All these 
suppositions that he was one returned from the 
grave imply the unspeakable purity, compassion 
and spirituality of his look. His appearance cor- 
responded with the highest claims his friends could 
advance. 

Indeed he was w T holly separate from sinners 
wmile among them. He never confessed sin, but 
always claimed sinless perfection; and the searching 
eye of God beheld no evil in him, but proclaimed 
him the one in whom "he was well pleased;" the first 
one wholly guiltless since the fall of the race. He 
walked in the sunlight of God's favor continually, 
and his communion with heaven was as intimate 



60 



nt every step of his way, as it was on the night of 
the Transfiguration ; indeed the transfiguration was 
in his every day appearance, and on that memora- 
ble night there was a temporary return to his 
original condition of glory, and unreserved inter- 
course with God. 

The appearance of this personage was the most 
cogent demonstration imaginable of the existence 
of an intelligent Ruler of the universe, most deeply 
interested in the human family, and most closely 
observant of its developments. 

Idolaters and infidelity worship an unfeeling, im- 
personal power called nature, the mother of all 
material things, there being no other, the funda- 
mental law of its dominion being that like begets 
like. Their philosophy does not explain the begin- 
ning of things. 

In the coming of Jesus of Nazareth a new and 
wholly diverse factor appeared upon the scene. His 
advent was the miracle of time, the most astonish- 
ing of all the wonders related in the Christian 
Scriptures, even those of the first chapter of Genesis. 
His appearance and ministry revealed God a per- 
sonal being, creator of all things, a sensitive being, 
a pure spirit ; and clearly defined his character. The 
sun of righteousness arose upon the world, when 
Jesus commenced his ministry, disguised beyond 
recognition. 

He was regarded by the people with fear. His 
supernatural powers, even when his works were won- 
ders of mercy, inspired fear. At the gate of Nain he 



61 



recalled a young man to life, whose body was just 
about to be committed to the tomb, and "a fear 
fell upon" the population. 

In Capernaum when a glorious miracle demon- 
strated his power on earth to forgive sins, and re- 
store to God's favor, "a great fear filled" the hearts 
of all. 

So the hushing of the tempest on the lake, and 
the relief of the Gadarene demonic made men's 
hearts tremble. The fear of the people was a con- 
tinual defense for him against the power of his en- 
emies; when these gnashed their teeth upon him and 
would have taken him, fear palsied every arm, and 
deterred even sworn officers from touching him. 
The Jewish mob could murder Stephen for speaking 
against the temple; Jesus they had not dared to 
assail. 

His immaculate purity and holiness also held 
every one that approached him in awe. The secrets 
of every character were naked and open before him ; 
and the veil which men assume before their fellows 
fell off in his presence. Lust went out from before 
him "beginning at the eldest even to the last;" 
murder let the stone taken to cast at him drop from 
his hand; hypocrisy could not hold its mask; envy 
and malice durst ask him no second question ; 
avarice gave up its hoards; the rage of his murder- 
ers could not prefer a charge against him; he was 
condemned and executed without a formulated and 
sustained charge. 

He appeared to take no interest in things of a 
merely worldly nature. As a boy of twelve years 



62 



in the city of his fathers, his time was not spent in 
exploring the localities rendered famous in the his- 
tory of his family, or in visiting the tombs of his 
royal ancestors, but in the temple. His reply to his 
anxious mother shows his self-consciousness even 
then: you quote to me Joseph as my father, but I 
know who my father is; and where should I be 
found but in my father's house? He had a sublime 
sense of his high origin, a subject of which Mary 
had never spoken to him. Mothers do not talk of 
such matters with their sons. 

When the disciples called his attention to the 
buildings of the temple, the stones being so beauti- 
fully hewn and fitted as to make the whole pile look 
like a single block, as the ancients could hew and 
lay immense stones in aqueducts without the use of 
cement, so. nicely prepared and jointed as to hold 
and carry water without excessive leakage, some of 
them even to this day; so precise was ancient 
masonry; his eye saw the ruins, when not one stone 
would be left upon another that should not be 
thrown down. 

He was no respecter of persons. In this he was 
singular and diverse from all men. The directions 
given in James ii:l-6, concerning the unequal treat- 
ment in Christian assemblies accorded to a gentle- 
man in gay clothing and gold rings, and a poor 
man in vile raiment, which sound so strange to 
modern ears, and were not fully observed even in 
the apostolic age, are a perfecct description of the 
Lord Jesus. Such precisely was he in his intercourse 



63 



with men, as is commended in these verses. His 
enemies said: "Thou carest for no man; for thou 
regardest not the person of men." 

Rank, authority or wealth made no impression 
on him, earthly distinctions did not affect him in 
the least. He treated a blind beggar in his rags 
more kindly than he did a prince, to whose eager 
questioning "he answered nothing;" the low-minded, 
vulgar woman of Samaria received his loving atten- 
tion, as readily as the rich and cultured Nicodemus; 
he preferred the poor widow with her two mites to 
the richest men of the nation. 

While every one was treated by him with the 
most tender consideration, a hopelessly unworthy 
character, however gilded, secured little notice from 
him but in tearful pity. An unfathomable compassion 
even for his bitterest enemies was the predominant 
expression of his countenance. His discrimination was 
unerring, and his conduct peculiar. Few things re- 
lating to the intercourse of men are more strongly 
condemned in the word of God than the accepting 
of persons. This characteristic of our Savior is one 
of the most striking confirmations of his divinity. 

It is also undeniable that this kind and loving 
being w 7 as capable of anger. His eye at times car- 
ried a look before which men quailed, and crowds 
were overawed. There were occasions on which he 
rose to an incomparable loftiness of bearing, and 
spoke as it were from the judgment seat. His emo- 
tions were marked by an intensity and depth never 
existing in simple humanity, and his countenance; 
accurately reflected them, being singularly full of 



64 



expression; but it is necessary to discriminate be- 
tween anger in him and human temper in two 
particulars. 

1 Cor., chapter xiii, doubtless a transcript of 
him from the life, has in its category one descrip- 
tion "is not easily provoked," which might better 
be translated never falls into a passion. There was 
in him no fit of temper, no paroxysm of rage such 
as men exhibit, but a stern, withering disapproba- 
tion, calm yet threatening as Sinai. 

His reproofs were intolerable ; they stung Judas 
to madness, and the most conspicuous figure among 
the twelve became a traitor. An instance in point 
is found in his cleansing of the temple. There was 
evidently a light in his eye, before which its dese- 
crators fled. The feeling which animated him is called 
by the sacred historian zeal not anger, anger 
stripped of its vindictiveness, and full of effort for 
God's glory. "Zeal is the pure and holy flame the 
fire of love supplies." 

Another distinction must be kept in mind, pity 
always predominated in his anger, Mk. iii:5. "He 
looked round about upon them with anger, being 
grieved for the hardness of their hearts." Love and 
love alone can be grieved. In him indignation and 
compassion strangely mingled: he could weep while 
condemning: his heart was bleeding with pity, while 
words of doom were on his lips. His anger was 
grief. His harshest, most terrible denunciation 
ended probably in a gush of tears. Matt. xxiii:18. 
Such a strange commingling of fiery indignation, 
and preponderating kindness and affection is not 
human; it is divine. 



65 



In his ministry Jesus was attended by crowds 
greater than ever assembled spontaneously to greet 
the most illustrious personages of history. Luke 
mentions one concourse in Perea that was numbered 
by tens of thousands. In it were at least twenty- 
five or thirty thousands, and there may have been 
more still; and they were so packed as to threaten 
damage to some. Under arbitrary governments 
such immense assemblages of the people are re- 
garded by the ruling powers with serious apprehen- 
sion, and prevented from collecting if possible, or 
dispersed as rapidly as might be, as affording occa- 
sion for disturbances chiefly political, or for crimes 
often of the gravest character. No such precaution 
however was necessary in this case. The multitude 
was as orderly and quiet as the congregation about 
the temple. The presence of Jesus was sufficient to 
restrain them from the slightest disorder, to check 
all idle bantering and sparring, that unavoidably 
attend all large gatherings, to still all neighborly 
gossip, and prevent the petty crimes of larceny, 
pocket-picking and altercations usually attending 
large crowds, and engross the attention of all in 
one absorbing personality. Men's hearts thrilled at 
his words as the Eolian strings vibrate to the wind. 

No other voice was heard, no other object di- 
verted the fixed gaze of the numberless eyes; the 
least threatened interruption was an annoyance not 
to be suffered, bringing down upon its author the 
angry rebuke of bystanders. No teacher was ever 
so listened to, men seemed to be almost unconscious 

— 5 



66 



of the presence of their fellows, and to see and hear 
nought but the entrancing speaker. His voice had 
strange music in it, his countenance was a heavenly 
vision, and before him hearts throbbed with a new 
sensation. A holy calm filled the air, and be the 
day of the week whatever day chanced, it was vir- 
tually a sabbath, and the assembly a holy convo- 
cation. It needed not the aid of the disciples even 
to assist in the preservation of order; his own great 
presence overawed the crowd, as it stilled the temp- 
est on the lake. 

One unusual feature of such assemblages as 
waited upon him was the presence of a fair and 
some times even a large representation of women 
and children. Instead of shrinking from dense and 
promiscuous crow T ds of the other sex, as they usually 
do, an extreme desire led them to disregard con- 
ventionalism entirely. The female heart less har- 
dened by the rough conflicts of life, and gifted with 
a keener intuition was strangely moved' at the sight 
and hearing of Jesus. Ladies of rank and wealth 
left their homes to accompany his suite, and min- 
ister to him of their substance. 

The presence of ordinary women in large num- 
bers is incidentally mentioned in a few instances, 
and plainly implied in others, as for instance in the 
press which surged after him as he was accompany- 
ing Jairus to his desolated home; when a young 
unmarried woman crowded through the mass of 
people following, in order to touch him or at least 
to touch his garments. It is not likely that she 
would thus elbow her way through a dense crowd 



67 



composed of men only. Women must have also been 
scattered thick in the press; and as the case of 
Jairus in his bereavement appealed most strongly 
to their sympathies, some of them must have been 
in the very front of the moving throng. 

In another account a woman is heard express- 
ing the sentiments of the assembly: "Blessed is the 
womb that bare thee, and the paps which thou hast 
sucked." The majority of the audience probably 
were females, and she spoke the common conviction 
so distinctly, that the Savior answered the speech : 
"Yea more blessed are they that hear the word of 
God and keep it." 

Childhood, unsophisticated as it always is, felt 
the attraction, and gathered to him as the bees do 
to the early blossoms. The composition of the 
crowds about him was singular, and declares the 
verdict of unperverted and truth loving humanity 
in his favor, although in the storm of fierce and 
engrossing passion this voice was not heard. 

The truths which he taught, and the precepts 
which he established were derived entirely from the 
Jewish scriptures, the Old Testament; which was 
then understood to authorize hatred of those guilty 
of injuries, to justify retaliation and reprisals, to 
approve of polygamy and concubinage, to allow 
the greatest facility of divorce on the whim of the 
husband, to condemn only false swearing, to enjoin 
only formal worship, etc. The teaching of the 
Nazarene prophet rectified the false interpretations 
of the scribes, and cast a sunlight glory over the 



68 



holy word; but he added nothing new; though it is 
usual to admit that he did inaugurate a code of 
ethics entirety new, and utterly opposite in spirit to 
the Jewish law. His precepts are considered to be 
characteristic of the gospel which he preached and 
wholly new; but he derived them all from the sacred 
books in the hands of the people. 

The sermon on the mount is now conceded to 
have been an exposition of the law of ten commands. 
A study of it shows that his explanation establishes 
two rules of interpretation; first that the forbidding 
of an outward act implies also the forbidding of 
the temper which would lead to its commission; and 
second the prohibition of an act and of the temper 
which would prompt it, carries with it the require- 
ment of the opposite disposition. 

So the command "thou shalt not kill" on this 
interpretation forbids all hatred, envy or malice 
which by indulgence might incite to murder, and 
enjoins the possession of the opposite spirit. Its 
purport is, thou salt not indulge a spirit of hatred 
even of one who has done you an injury; but shalt 
cultivate the opposite temper. So from this sixth 
command he deduced the duties of forgiveness of 
enemies, and non-resistance of evil. He was saying 
no new thing; this is no new morality; "this is the 
law and the prophets;" this is the fair sense of the 
law of Sinai, and the spirit of the holy books as it 
has always been. 

In Ler. 19:18 is found the command: "thou 
shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." "Whatsoever 
ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even 



69 



so unto them likewise" is the translation of this 
abstract requirement into conduct. It is its exact 
equivalent in the actions of the life. 

The law of Sinai interpreted by the rules of his 
exegesis blossoms into gospel beauty and "glory. 
Our generation hearing his interpretation at this 
distance of time with the utmost astonishment ap- 
plauds the precepts as new discoveries in the realm, 
of morals: with what amazement must his hearers 
have been struck at hearing them derived from their 
own holy books! Had two suns at the instant 
shown above their heads, their wonder could not 
have been greater. 

Then he knew how to draw from the inspired 1 
word principles as fundamental as the law of Sinai,, 
and as perpetual. When he cited to the men of that 
day the fact that in the beginning God made one 
man and one woman, and united the pair for life; 
he enunciated a principle, which at a single stroke 
would destroy their whole S3 r stem of facile divorce, 
and prove the very foundation stone on which alone- 
a perfect society could be founded ; a principle more 
essential to the welfare of communities and states 
than all other enactments ever made. 

So his saying: "the Sabbath was made for man, 
and not man for the Sabbath" was an axiom, whose 
application would tear down well nigh the whole 
fabric of their religion, whose principal feature was 
a superstitious observance of the seventh day. God, 
after having made provision for the support and 
comfort of man's physical life, instituted the Sab- 
bath to meet his spiritual necessities. It was or- 



70 



darned for man's help not for adding to the essen- 
tial greatness of God. In the order of creation man 
was first then the day of spiritual communion with 
his maker; a day whose obligation will be coeval 
with the continuance of the race. 

Truth wields the sceptre of authority over the 
"human spirit, and right commands the conscience, 
and such was the nature of the authority accom- 
panying him, of which all who heard him were con- 
scious. The people "were astonished at his doctrine." 
These identical words are four times repeated in the 
gospel history on four different occasions, and Luke 
explains their wonder by saying "for his word was 
with power." No miracles occurred in connection 
with the teaching at the time, the power mentioned 
was felt in the teaching, and had its source in the 
speaker. 

There are other notices of the amazement of the 
listeners: indeed he never spoke without awakening 
an interest that engrossed the hearers, and on one 
occasion held them for three days without food or 
refreshment. 

The truths which he inculcated were all derived 
from the scriptures of the Old Testament, and com- 
manded the assent of every hearer; still they aroused 
attention and inquiry as to the personality of the 
teacher, more than to the sunlight wisdom of his 
instructions. He did not, like the ancient prophets, 
deliver in the name of God any communicated mes- 
sage; but taught with an authority of his own, 
identifying himself with the Most High in an in- 
timate and inseparable association. He did not 



71 



avow himself in direct claim ; but all his words were 
spoken seemingly from a consciousness of divine 
prerogative. A higher tone of authority and rank 
could not be assumed or imagined. 

His works proved all that he claimed : that he 
was the great Creator in disguise come to seek and 
bring back his banished. His words aroused a far 
deeper interest than did his most wonderful works. 
His announcement of the love of God for man was 
a new theme, capable of stirring souls to their 
depths. This is the sword that pierces the heart to 
its center, the hammer that breaks the flinty rock 
in the human bosom to pieces, the fire that melts 
it until its dross is purged, and its tin consumed. 
The sense of it will subdue an enemy and change a 
sinner into a saint. It is "more than a match for 
a mill-stone heart which wonders to feel its own 
hardness depart." "Against thy power rebellious I 
have strove; but who can stand against thy love?" 
Lips of clay never spoke of the love of God as Jesus 
could. This drew crowds as honey draws the bees 
who scent it from afar. This made some of his par- 
ables inimitable and unapproachable. 

His teaching respecting the character of man 
was surprising. He announced himself as "come to 
seek and to save that which was lost." The word 
which he used was more forcible than our word lost. 
It does not mean straying away from the fold of 
God, but might as well be translated "damned," 
though not yet in the world of despair. 

Nothing so reveals the extreme sinfulness of 
human nature as the work which Jesus undertook 



72 



to accomplish in our behalf. If the agonies of the 
two divine persons were demanded for man's re- 
demption, his case is an evil one, and his guilt and 
danger are extreme. And what was the reception 
which he met? His rejection was a genuine exhibi- 
tion of human nature. The enmity of vipers assailed 
him, and swept him from the earth. "The thoughts 
of many hearts are revealed" by this treatment of 
the messenger of the skies. This earth has a dis- 
tinction above all the worlds of God's dominion: 
it massacred the ambassador of peace and this was 
the act of the race. His descriptions of human na- 
ture has a fearful sound, but they are like the 
solemn testimony in court of a loving father forced 
from him against children for whom he would give 
his life. 



73 



CHAPTER V. 



Jesus Cheist. The God. 



No more important inquiry can come before the 
human mind than that concerning the real person- 
ality of Jesus Christ. In considering it, attention 
should be directed to the claims which he himself 
made, and the grounds on which they rested. It is 
evident from the history that he relied upon the 
works which he was commissioned to perform, as 
the testimony of God to the truth of his mission. 
They are not only proof of his mission from God : 
they also reveal his exalted identity. He said to his 
disciples : "If I had not done among them the works 
which none other man did, they had not had sin.' r 
The most stupendous miracles in the career of 
Moses, or Joshua, or Elijah are inferior in grandeur 
and testimony to the least and most ordinary work 
of the Nazarene. It is not the miracle, so much as 
the manner in which it was effected, that tells. 



74 



No other being ever wrought a miracle in all 
human history. The gift of prophecy and the gift 
of miracles are identically one and the same en- 
dowment, as in the latter no power is communi- 
cated, but simply a foreknowledge of God's purpose 
to interpose, and the manner of his interposition. 
Moses is often referred to as the . great miracle- 
worker of the Old Testament; but Moses possessed 
and exercised no more power than any other man. 
When commanded to cast his staff to the ground, 
he had no knowledge of what was about to occur, 
and was surprised and terrified at the result. He 
did not in any exigency know in what manner 
God's deliverance would come. When Israel were 
entangled in the wilderness after their escape from 
Egypt, and the host of Pharaoh thundering behind 
pressed upon their rear, Moses was on his knees 
praying that some way might be opened for their 
relief, and was the most surprised man of the com- 
pany when the command came: "speak unto the 
children of Israel that they go forward" into the 
sea the roaring of whose waves could be heard above 
all the din. 

So also when the people thirsted in the wilder- 
ness and were ready to perish for lack of water, 
Moses knew nothing about the way in which a sup- 
ply would come. His words to God were: "What 
shall I do unto this people, they be almost ready 
to stone me?" The reply of the angel was as great 
a surprise to him as to the multitude. That the 
smiting of the solid cliff with a staff of wood should 
force the mountain to omit a river for thirty-eight 



75 



years, almost staggered his faith. Moses could do 
nothing without his rod; when it failed, through 
weariness of his arms to point to the pillar whence 
help always came, Moses failed. It was not Moses 
it was his rod. 

How differently were the works of Jesus wrought 
from those of Moses and the other prophets ! Every- 
thing in earth, sea and sky obeyed the slightest 
expression of his will, and proved him to be the 
one who in the beginning said: "let there be light; 
and there was light." He stands alone in all history 
as the only one who had in himself power to work 
miracles, and to commission others as man} T as he 
pleased, to do the same or greater works than his 
own. It was his name through faith in his name 
~fchat healed diseases, expelled demons and raised 
the dead. 

Our Lord relied upon the miracles and his own 
conformity to prophecy as proofs of his claims. The 
miracles aroused the attention of the nation and 
electrified it; his conformity to the prophecies con- 
vinced those that received him. The miracles also 
revealed the high standing and true character of 
the mighty operator. 

Some of the works were such as no prophet had 
ever performed since time began, being absolutely 
creative acts. Among them one class is described 
as "the maimed are made whole." 

The meaning of the word "maimed" can be de- 
termined from Mk. ix:48, where it is used in con- 
trast with "having two hands." "And if thy hand 
offend thee, cut it off; it is better for thee to enter 



76 



into life maimed, than having two hands to go into 
hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched. n 
It is plain that the class of unfortunates is intended 
found in every community, deprived of one limb. 
The restoration of an arm or a leg can be ac- 
complished by creative power alone. 

The feeding of five thousand beside women and 
children on a single man's daily ration, with a re- 
mainder many times greater than the original sup. 
ply, was effected by a creative act. 

The restoration of a withered arm to its original 
plumpness and muscular power demanded the word 
of a creator; as perhaps did the straightening of 
the back of the woman bowed down like a beast 
with a body carried parallel with the ground. Only 
he who first gave man the "os sublime" could re- 
store it. 

The recovery of sight by the man born blind 
was a work of the same kind. Such unfortunates 
have the eye-sockets half filled generally with a 
rudimentary mass of unorganized flesh, wanting the 
telescopic arrangement necessary for vision. The 
supply of the properly organized and arranged ma. 
terial, the hand of the' almighty architect alone 
could furnish. 

Other miracles are recorded which seem to de- 
mand creative ability, the change of water into 
wine, the healing of the deaf and dumb, quelling the 
storm on the Sea of Gallillee: showing that the 
tempest was conducted by power emanating from 
him, and restoring the man impotent, (paralyzed) 
in modern speech for thirty-eight years, and perhaps 
others. 



77 



In another respect the works of Jesus surpassed 
any ever before wrought. His personal presence 
with an applicant was not necessary in order to ac- 
complish his merciful purpose; his word was effective 
at any distance. When the man born blind was re- 
porting his case to the council; that his sight was 
gained by washing his eyes in the waters of Siloam 
at the command of Jesus, the first question asked 
him was: "Where is HE?" as though the cure 
could not have taken place unless he had been pres- 
ent, and practicing upon him. But his word was 
effective at the distance of twenty miles, as he, 
while in Cana of Gallilee, healed the nobleman's 
son sick in Capernaum. The father, who had in- 
tended to take Jesus down in his chariot standing 
ready at hand, heard in the tone of the prophet as 
he said: "thy son liveth," such a sublime con- 
sciousness of supreme power, that he himself did not 
go down on that afternoon, as he had purposed; 
but had lost his anxiety altogether. 

How was the mother surprised at that very in- 
stant, who had sat watching at the bedside for his 
death, to see him suddenly rise up, leap out of bed, 
throw on his clothes, call for food, devour it rav- 
enously, and go out to the sports of young boy- 
hood ! With her husband's consent she left home 
to follow the prophet, hear his instructions, and 
minister to him of her substance. 

So the ten lepers were not healed on the spot, 
but at so great a distance, that they were not will- 
ing to return to give him thanks. One only expressed 
his sense of obligation. 



78 



Perhaps the incident that most strangely illus- 
trates the extent of his universal survey and control 
took place in Capernaum, when he was called upon 
for tribute ; as it showed that while sitting in Peter's 
house, he saw every thing in the waters of the lake. 
Some man somewhere had dropped a coin of con- 
siderable size into the water, which a fish, attracted 
by its glitter, had taken into his mouth but could 
not swallow, his throat not permitting, nor could he 
eject it from his mouth. The master distinguished 
that fish from the millions of others in the lake. 
The fish, following its own instincts, came to the dock 
of the city just at the right time and to the hook 
of Peter; but there was a guiding power behind 
that instinct, and it resided in the Nazarene. This 
may be called a trifling incident; but nothing con- 
nected with him is trifling. Omniscience, omnipres- 
ence and a wholly inconceivable power are declared 
by it. These incidents taken together prove as much 
as the creation of a world could. 

So when the seventy were sent forth in pairs his 
real and powerful presence went with each couple, 
and performed the miracles over a wide strip of 
country simultaneously, at the various points where 
the several parties were. 

But the grand distinction of the works of Jesus 
is that they were effected without the use of any 
means whatever. There was no process, no succes- 
sion of steps, no interval between his word of com. 
mand, and the full completion of the work com- 
manded. This is the divine method. "He spake, 
and it was done; he commanded, and it stood fast." 



79 



The use of clay and water on the eyes of the man 
born blind was not the use of means contributing 
to the result in any sense ; if they had any effect at 
all their action must have been adverse. When 
Jesus spoke, the result followed without an instant's- 
delay. The flesh of Lazarus was a mass of corrup- 
tion ; but at the word of Jesus it became normal, 
healthy and alive instantaneously, "in a moment, 
in the twinkling of an eye." This is the manner of 
a creator, and it demonstates the personality of 
Jesus to be identical with him who laid the founda- 
tions of the earth, wrapped it around with seas as 
with swaddling clothes, and stretched out above it 
the heavens as a tent to dwell in. The creative 
power of the Godhead was vested in -him. 

Another ground on which our Lord rested his 
claims for reception by the people was his con- 
formity to prophecy. Their "scriptures were they 
that testified of him." The sacred books of the na- 
tion contained a most remarkable body of predic- 
tion, which could by no possibility be misapplied to 
any other personage that ever appeared among men, 
not even in one particular. The great burden of the 
inspired lore was the appearing of the Savior of the 
race, who should come into the world virgin-born, 
the seed of the woman without human father; that 
he should make his appearance before the sceptre 
departed from Judah, and before the dispersion of 
the Jewish nation; being born in Bethlehem, from 
which little city no other world-renowned leader has 
originated, and which prophecy has never been ful- 
filled if not in him; that he should be David's son 



80 



in the direct line of succession to the throne, there 
being but one such in each generation; that the 
seven-fold spirit "of the Lord, the spirit of wisdom 
and understanding, of counsel and might, of knowl- 
edge and fear of the Lord," should rest upon him; 
that he should enter Jerusalem his capital in tri- 
umph as a king, but without the remotest re- 
semblance to a wordly king in a progress, in any 
of its accessories; but in strict conformity to the 
foregoing predictions of the event; that he should 
be rejected, abhorred and swept from the face of 
the earth by violence; that under nameless indig- 
nities, and in tae torment of the most cruel death 
that earth could inflict, that of the Eoman cross 
aggravated to the last possible degree, he should 
be dumb as a sheep before its shearers, and not open 
his mouth to murmur or complain under the most 
acute suffering; that he should be buried by a, rich 
man; but that his flesh should not see corruption; 
that on the third day the grave should yield hi s 
living body back as the fish did Jonah; that God 
should make him king indeed, and set his throne 
on Mount Zion in spite of the combined opposition 
of the worldly powers; that God should own him as 
his equal and beloved son, and "give him the Gentiles 
(heathen) for his inheritance, and the uttermost 
parts of the earth for his possession." These pre- 
dictions are interspersed with the most unmistakable 
announcements of his supreme divinity. This word 
of prophecy is a "more sure" attestation of Christ's 
divinity than even miracles could afford; and has 
been fulfilled in Jesus to the letter, while not one 



81 



item of it is applicable to any other character that 
has ever lived ; and none of it has ever been fulfilled 
if not in him. 

The scriptures plainly declare Jesus Christ to be 
God underived and independent. The first passage 
affirming this that demands attention, is from 
Heb. vii:3, which says, speaking of Melchisedeck : 
"Without father, without mother, without descent, 
having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but 
made like unto the son of God, abideth a priest 
continually.'' This description of Melchisedeck. who 
ever he may have been, applies to him only as a 
type, and even then requires a straining of terms 
beyond common usage; but is intended to be under- 
stood to be precisely true to the last letter respect- 
ing Jesus Christ; he is witLout father, without 
mother, without descent, having neither beginning 
of days nor end of life. It clearly asserts his unde- 
rived and independent Deity : that he was not be- 
gotten in the human sense of the term. When God 
says in Ps. ii:7, u Thou art my son; this day have 
I begotten thee," the language must be understood 
metaphorically. On the third day he was begotten 
from the womb of the grave, and was declared to 
be the son of God with power. 

Jno. i:14 again contains an assertion that can 
never be true of any derived and dependent being: 
"in him was life." No creature can have life in 
himself; his life is in God. This is a statement that 
Christ is self-existent, and he frequently repeats this 
claim respecting himself: "I am the resurrection 

-6 



82 



.-and the life," "I am the way and the truth and the 
life " "because I live ye shall live also." In him is 
a plenilude of life indestructible, inexhaustible and 
incomparable wth the life of creatures. The subtle 
principle of life in its lowest stages eludes the in- 
vestigations of scientists, and passes human dis- 
covery and understanding, and it always will. The 
breath of the divinity supplies it. Its storehouse 
is Jesus Christ; he is its original fountain. It can 
be apprehended and explained, when men can under- 
stand God, and find out the Almighty to perfection. 

He exists from a necessity of his nature; and 
the strength of the everlasting force compelling that 
existence is immeasurable by the mind of man or 
angel. The creation of races of intelligent spiritual 
beings, numberless as are the worlds of his empire, 
will not exhaust his vital energy, or affect it in the 
slightest degree. The fire of the sun is fed by the 
continual accession of material necessary to main- 
tain its light and heat : God alone is in no need of 
supply, he can never be exhausted. The distinction 
and glory of Jehovah is that he is the living God, 
that in him is life, that can never cease. This self- 
existence of Jesus involves the possession of the in- 
communicable attributes of eternity : He is the first 
and the last, the alpha and the omega, the "father 
of eternity" past and future Is. ix:6; infinity, "up- 
holding all things by the word of his power;" and 
immutability, "Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, 
to-day and forever." 

The scriptures speak of the power of Christ as 
iunderived. Paul quotes from Ps. 102 words spoken 






83 



to the Son by the Father: "Thy throne God is for- 
ever and ever ; a sceptre of righteousness is the scep- 
tre|of thy kingdom. Thou hast loved righteousness, 
and hated iniquity; therefore God even thy God 
hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above 
thy fellows. And then, Lord, in the beginning hast 
laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens 
are the work of thy hands. They shall perish ; but 
thou remainest : and they all shall wax old as doth 
a garment, and as a vesture shalt thou fold them 
up, and they shall be changed; but thou art the 
same, and thy years shall not fail." 

God could never say to Moses, behold, the subd uing 
of Egypt's proud King; the deliverance of Israel, the 
opening of the sea, and the destruction of the enemies 
in its waters; these are thy works Moses. He had no 
part in the work. When so commanded he held out 
the rod, an altogether other power effected the re- 
sults : but the laying of the foundations of the earth, 
and stretching out the heavens above it, were the 
actual work of Jesus Christ by his own personal 
power; as will be the final rolling of them up as a 
man rolls up and lays aside a worn-out garment. 

In comparison with these mighty acts, how petty 
and insignificant seem the mighty works of his min- 
istry on earth ! It was a part of his humiliation to 
perform only such. Could human eyes behold him 
as he rolls up these heavens as a scroll, and they 
"pass away with a great noise/' a groan as it were 
of a dissolving universe, some adequate conception 
might be reached of the incomprehensible power re- 
siding in him. Could human eyes behold him com- 



84 



ing in the glory of his Father with the holy angels 
— when, at the voice of him who is the resurrection 
and the life, who called Lazarus from the tomb, 
almost the entire dust of the globe shall be rean- 
imated into living forms, and his resistless word 
shall reunite to them the souls their former inhab- 
itants in each case without error, and behold him 
open the books of memory, of conscience and of 
spiritual experience — but human eyes would be so 
engrossed by the glories and terrors of the mighty 
judge, before whose splendor the sun itself will for- 
bear to shine as hardly to notice the accompani- 
ments of the scene. 

Still another evidence of his independent power 
is found in the manner in which the miracles of the 
New Testament were wrought. That the works of 
the Master himself were effected by his own uncon- 
strained will appears in every separate account of 
each. They were indeed " works which the Father 
had given him to do," i. e. the Father had limited 
him to works of aid to suffering humanity, and 
allowed no other; being such as could be effected 
without ostentation or display. 

The apostles wrought miracles by the name of 
Jesus, and by no other authority. In such a case 
the name used should indicate the basal authority 
from whom the power is derived. Had the Father 
been the real and ultimate source of power, the 
works should have been wrought in his name. The 
fact that the name of Jesus, through faith in his 
name, accomplished everything asked, was a con- 
tinual proclamation of his presence and of his inde- 
pendent agency. 



85 



Even Satan, who knew well the personage whom 
he was addressing, admitted that Jesus could, with- 
out the concurrence of the Father, change the cob- 
ble stones into loaves of bread, cast himself down 
unhurt from the sky, as it were, into the midst of 
the throng of worshipers before the temple, and even 
assume the empire of the nations in his own time 
and way. In this matter, liar though he be, his 
testimony is competent and reliable. His effort was 
to induce our Lord to act independently of the 
Father, and without his concurrence; this was the 
temptation. 

These facts thus submitted explain the remark- 
able manner in which the name of God is used in 
the ancient scriptures. The name commonly em- 
ployed is a plural noun "elohini," meaning Gods; 
and the literal translation of Gen. i:l would be "In 
the beginning Gods HE created the heavens and the 
earth." The plural in the Hebrew never designates 
fewer than three objects, and the connected verb is 
of the singular number. Where God is reported as 
speaking, he speaks generally in the plural, often 
however in the singular. As "Let us make man in 
our image after our likeness," "the man is become 
as one of us to know good and evil," "let us go 
down to confound their language," "who will go for 
us?" "whom shall I send?" "I have given you every 
herb." These indicate that there is a Trinity in the 
Godhead, and a unity as well. The plural number 
is used by God in speaking directly of himself in 
many passages which do not admit of a plural 
translation in English, "If I (singular) be masters 



86 



(plural) where is iny (singular) honor?" ''Remem- 
ber now thy creators in the days of thy youth. " 
"For thy makers are thy husbands." Is. liv:5, "and 
forgettest the Lord thy maker," Is. li:13, God is 
the maker or the makers indifferently. Prov. ix:10 
"For the knowledge of the Holy ones is under- 
standing." Prov. xxx:3, "I neither learned wisdom 
nor have the knowledge of the Holy ones." Dan. 
iv:17, "This matter is by the decree of the watchers, 
and the demand by the word of the Holy ones." 
Dan. v:18, "The Most High God gave Nebuchad- 
nezzar a kingdom and glory," v:20 "They took 
his kingdom from him." 

The New Testament reveals to us who these dis- 
tinct persons are : the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. 
The selections given above from the Old Testament 
might be multiplied: they are representative speci- 
mens of a style that is characteristic of the in- 
spired book. 

It is also a fact that Jesus Christ himself pro- 
fessed to be God. This profession is heard in his 
teaching on all occasions; he is not speaking from 
the standpoint of a creature even of the highest 
order, but from the elevation of the eternal throne. 
Real faith receives him for what himself professed 
to be. It inquires only as to what his conscious- 
ness affirmed. He certainly knew whether he had 
existed "before the world was," before "one thing 
was made that was made," whether he possessed 
"all power in heaven and earth," whether he was 
one with the Father in an indissoluble connection: 
and faith trusts his consciousness, and receives its 
testimony. 



87 



It is true that he made no distinct public avowal' 
of his exalted standing until his trial before the 
council: it was not his method. He conformed 
closely to the foregoing prophecy in Is. xi:ll: that 
he should not advocate his own cause by any noisy 
assertion of his high claims; but still the whole 
Jewish nation understood his position from the 
witness of John, and of the heavenly voice at his 
baptism, confirmed by the uninterrupted course of: 
mighty works following. Still our Lord clearly as- 
serts himself, in his answers to the cavils of his op- 
ponents, who were even then stumbling over the 
stumbling stone of his divinity, w 7 hich he strongly 
proclaimed in his examination before Caiaphas. 

In Jno. x:37-38 one such answer is reported: "If L 
do not the works of my Father, believe me not ; but: 
if I do, if ye believe not me, believe the works : that 
ye may know and believe that the Father is in me,, 
and I in him" in the same sense. His works could 
not have been more divinely wrought, if the unseen 
Father from heaven the holy place had commanded, 
and accomplished them by his instantaneous energy. 
The works of Christ were as different from the works 
of prophets as heaven is higher than the earth, and 
wrought after the example of divine operation given 
in the first chapter of Genesis. k Tf ye believe not 
me, believe the works, that ye may know and be- 
lieve that the Father is in me," it would seem that 
none could deny that the works prove this. They 
also as convincingly demonstrated that he was in- 
timately connected with the Father by a community 
of nature. 



88 



Indeed he acknowledged no associate, nor part- 
ner, nor counsellor but the eternal Father. He as- 
sociated himself with him in every divine operation, 
in creation, in Providence, in the administration of 
redemption, in judgment, in all things. His words 
assert the equality of the divine persons. Between 
the two there is a bond so intimate and affection so 
endeared as to admit of no comparison with any union 
of creatures.. He was continually in the bosom of the 
Father, ever embraced in the arms of everlasting 
love. He knew the Father as intimately as the 
Father knew him. All things that the Father had 
were his. The connection was inseparable, the son 
could do nothing without the Father, neither could 
the Father without the son. They could not act 
apart, but concurred in every operation. He that 
had seen Jesus had seen the Father, and he that 
believed on Jesus had rather believed on the Father. 

In short they were not two wholly separate be- 
ings united by ties of interest and affection, but 
they were one being, though the Father was greater 
than the son, in position only however. 

Such unity can exist in the Godhead alone. It 
is the distinction, the excellency, the glory of the 
divine three, united in a bond infinitely stronger 
than a love union. Such words were exceedingly 
offensive to bigoted monotheists ; stones were argu- 
ments with them, they cannot be understood by 
Christians: but what is there about God that can 
be understood ? Can his being without a beginning 
be understood? Can his power that can call a 



89 



universe out of nothing be understood? Can his 
knowledge to which all is open from the beginning 
to the end of time? 

Another reply to the Jewish cavillers is reported 
in Matt. xxii:41-48. Jesus, having made himself 
perfect master of the situation, asked the opposers 
who stood in a compact body before him: "What 
think ye of the Christ? Whose son is he?" and when 
they answered: "David's," he again asked: "How 
then doth David, speaking in the spirit, call him 
Lord? saying," and he quotes to them the cxth 
Psalm, a most wonderful prophecy and fulfilling 
just then before their eyes. The Christ is David's 
son in his humanity, but there is in him a lordship 
over David, and over all other beings. God promises 
to set his throne on Mt. Zion with resistless might 
and success; and that he should rule in the midst 
of raging enemies, and have for his subjects a willing 
people, made willing in the day of his power, and 
(shortly to be more in number than the dew from 
the womb of the morning), the correct translation 
of vs. 3. He. shall also enter upon his unchangeable 
Milchisedeekian priesthood, and perform its great 
function ; making the priceless sacrifice, by virtue of 
which the sins of man shall be expiated, being 
sustained by the spirit like the warrior by water 
from the running brook. Rising from the dead 
to sit at God's right hand, he shall see his foes 
become his footstool. He shall also see kings 
subdued before him, and rulers over many coun- 
tries subjected to his dominion, by the power 
of that same spirit which sustained him. His op- 



90 



ponents had feared to ask him a question, they now- 
feared to answer him a word. Doubtless many who 
heard him afterwards read that Psalm with new 
eyes, and it is to be hoped with new understand- 
ing, and new hearts. 



91 



CHAPTEK VI. 



Kejection and Death of Jesus. 



It is not easy to account for the early not to- 
say immediate opposition of the rulers of Israel to 
the young teacher of Nazareth, and their rapidly in- 
creasing hostility which so soon assumed a deadly 
character, and sought to destroy him so early in 
his career. Certainly offense was given by him be- 
fore his first appearance in Jerusalem as a prophefc 
and teacher. It can be taken for granted, though 
not expressly recorded, that when the rumor of his 
miracles at Capernaum reached the Synhedin, a 
deputation was commissioned to visit the place and 
examine the claims of the professed teacher, and de- 
mand of him, as was done in the case of the Baptist, 
by the authority of the council: "Who art thou 
that we may give an answer to them that sent us?" 
It was a call for an explicit avowal. 



92 



This was on their part an assumption of auth- 
ority by the Synhedrin not sustained by any direc- 
tions found in their sacred books. No one of the 
old prophets had been subjected to such inquisition, 
or had relied on a human court for his warrant. 
It is quite certain that such a committee did visit 
Capernaum on this very errand. Of the visit and 
interview no record remains, and the world is left 
in ignorance of the answer returned. It was not 
the manner of Jesus, however, to openly avow him- 
self to be the Christ; and when a departure from 
his usual course was made, the revelation was given 
to an humble sincere seeker rather than to a cap- 
tious critic. 

Messages were interchanged between Jerusalem 
and the Nazarene prophet, whose very name awak- 
ened prejudice and suggested, "can any good thing 
come out of Nazareth? or a prophet arise out of 
Galilee? It can easily be inferred from the reliable 
history that the proposal was made to him to com- 
mit the direction of his ministry to the heads of 
the nation, and that on this concession on his part 
they would agree to recognize and even support a 
prophet coming from Galilee and out of miserable 
Nazareth; otherwise opposition might be expected 
from them. It were wholly inconsistent with the 
mission of Jesus to accept authentication from man 
or even counsel or advice. Such an offer can only 
be classed with the proposals made to him in the 
wilderness by Satan. His ministry was to be wholly 
independent of man ; the refusal gave the rulers no 
just cause for opposition. 



93 



His first appearance in Jerusalem as a prophet- 
did however give mortal offense, and cause a hatred 
that pursued him to death. A profanation of the 
court of the Gentiles, which occupied at least one- 
half of the sacred enclosure of the temple area, had 
long been authorized by the high priest for a money 
consideration ; and had been allowed by the council; 
until it had grown to be an established custom. 
While everything connected with the temple w r as re- 
garded as possessing the greatest sanctity, and 
nothing so inflamed the nation as a violation of its 
sacredness; yet their exorbitant contempt of the 
Gentiles led them to esteem an infringement of their 
privileges in the holy place a venial matter. 

This encroachment elicited no complaint from 
the guardians of the holy precincts. The place had 
become a market for the sale and purchase of sac- 
rificial animals, and a brokers' exchange for the 
furnishing of Hebrew money. 

The noise of hundreds and even thousands of 
weary animals, and the chaffing of a multitude of 
traders disturbed the entire course of worship in all 
the courts. Then there was the constant clink of 
coin mingled with loud complaints against the ex- 
tortion of the brokers; and the result was a clam- 
orous mart in continual operation to the disturb- 
ance of all the solemnities of worship. Annas, who 
was yet living, is reported to have been the fijst in 
the office of high priest to introduce this simony. 

When on the first day of the feast of unleavened 
bread the new prophet beheld the desecration, it 
was with an indignation that transported him, and 



94 



even transfigured his person. With a loftiness of 
command that drew the wonder and admiration of 
thousands of spectators, he single-handed overthrew 
the tables of the money changers, scattering their 
coin in all directions, released the restive animals 
from their confinement, and drove out the owners 
and guardians as easily as he discharged the an- 
imals. All was accomplished without a blow ad- 
ministered except upon the animals; a slight one 
being necessary in some flocks to incite the leader 
to the head of the line of retreat to the gate at 
which they had entered. 

It was a most high-handed undertaking accom- 
plished not at all by physical force, but wholly by 
spiritual power. It presented him as the agent, per- 
haps the embodiment, of the divinity of the place, 
purging his own shrine from the debasement of 
avarice and greed, driving out the profane as the 
flaming sword drove out our first parents from 
Eden. He manifested a consciousness identifying 
him with the God of the temple. The spectacle made 
beholders hold their breath and transgressors trem- 
ble, reminding them of the fearful judgments of the 
Most High visited in the past upon violators of 
the Holy Place. The fire of God had flashed out 
from the altar upon Nadab and Abihu, Korah and 
his company went down alive into the pit, even a 
king infringing had received the brand of leprosy. 
There was something in the countenance and de- 
meanor of the Nazarene that brought all these to 
mind. 



95 



This modest young teacher, tender as a woman, 
gentle as a nurse, could on occasion flame as a 
sword of fire. Few were the words he spoke; but a 
mysterious power was in them ; his command devils 
would have obeyed; all was enacted with remarka- 
ble coolness and without haste. Henceforth the 
high priest and his supporters were deadly enemies ; 
though none had dared to utter a word of remon- 
strance or resist the order. 

No character is so hated as a reprover when 
his reproofs are justly merited, and guilt re- 
sents. Such wounds rankle, and the sore is 
never healed. This has ever been esteemed one of 
the greatest achievements of his entire ministry, as 
it more clearly reveals the indescribable air of 
authority and the overmastering presence of the 
Nazarene. All had been accomplished by the simple 
personality of the reformer. There was trouble hence- 
forth every time he came to the city. The temple 
party were in a fever of excitement while he remained. 

The twelve after a time at length felt that it was 
at the peril of their lives that they were seen on the 
streets of Jerusalem in company with the Nazarene, 
except when the city was thronged with visitors 
from all parts of the land. 

When their master was called to Bethany 
by the death of Lazarus, they objected to go- 
ing to the neighborhood: Thomas at last con- 
sented, saying if he goes "let us go and die with 
him." Shortly afterwards when the little com- 
pany crossed the river at Bethabara, and Jesus 
took the road to Jericho and Jerusalem, "as they 



96 



followed they were afraid." This visit meant death 
to him, and death or prison to themselves; death 
probably, had the enemies succeeded in their plan 
to arrest them. 

It was the common feeling of the multitude in 
Jerusalem that Jesus would not come to the feast r 
and they stood in groups questioning : "What think 
ye that he will not come to the feast?" He was 
the center of attraction to the whole nation. Had 
he consulted his own safety he would not have ap- 
peared. The hour of decision had arrived. 

He did come, but the manner of his coming in- 
timidated his enemies; his parables and discourses 
inflamed them to desperation. 

Knowing that the determination to destroy him 
was fixed and irreversible, he assumed the aggres- 
sive; made his entrance into the city a triumphal 
one; gave a judicial character to his parables and 
to the one miracle detailed, that of the figtree; and 
cleansed the temple the second time with greater 
severity of rebuke and force of manner ; tearing open 
afresh the still angry wound previously given to 
the high priest. 

Then the teachings of Jesus were beyond meas- 
ure distasteful to the priestly class. The bitterness 
of hatred entertained by formalism against a purely 
spiritual worship has been often exhibited in the 
persecutions instigated or carried on by the Roman 
church against the professors of a spiritual faith. 
A religious hatred surpasses all other in intensity. 
Hypocrisy was condemned by the Nazarene above 



97 



all other sins: "First of all beware ye of the leaven 
of the Pharisees which is hypocrisy," summarizes 
his instructions. 

When at his last presence in the city he had 
made himself the lord of the holy house, and perfect 
master of the situation, and the people were hang- 
ing* on his lips, he made the attack on the men who 
sat in Mosee' seat as rulers, in the discourse related 
in Matt, xxiii. He branded scribes and Pharisees as 
hypocrites in words tharfc cut to the heart; harsher 
could not be spoken, and the accused standing be- 
fore him wilted under them ; yet there mingled not 
a fraction of personal rancor in the terrible denun- 
ciation. The closing words were a pathetic cry with 
flowing tears probably : "0 Jerusalem ! Jerusalem ! 
thou that killed the prophets, and stonest them 
that are sent unto thee, how often would 1 have 
gathered thy children as a hen gathereth her brood 
under her wings, and ye would not." The purpose 
to destroy him became an iron resolve to hesitate- 
no longer, but to put him away at once. 

He had not been able to do many mighty works 
in Jerusalem because of their unbelief; the city being 
dominated and swayed by the temple party, and his 
miracles w T ere performed only at the national feasts, 
when the streets were crowded with other than the 
usual inhabitants. 

Such were the leaders and instigators of the 
greatest crime in history, but the people were in 
sympathy with them. Nazareth had already re- 
jected him and Capernaum, Chorazin and Bethsaida. 

—7 



98 



The last year of his ministry had been spent in hid- 
ing as it were. The seventy disciples had been sent 
out "as lambs among wolves," so general was the 
rejection of him. Opportunity only was needed for 
a formal declaration of it. 

At a meeting of the council hastily called to de- 
liberate on the situation, the spirit of prophecy 
came upon the high priest, (it must have been in 
consideration of his office; the words and not the 
man were inspired), and he was led to say: f 'Ye 
know nothing at all; nor consider that it is expe- 
dient for us that one man die for the people that 
the whole nation perish not;" words which evidently 
conveyed the truth that neither Caiaphas nor his 
fellow conspirators understood the situation at all, 
nor the rank of the victim of their plot, who should 
die for no sin of his own, nevertheless it was God's 
pleasure that he should die to save the sinners of 
the nation and of the race. This inspired announce- 
ment the conspirators misinterpreted according to 
their excited passions, and were fortified in their 
resolution of murder. 

The attempt to arrest him was indeed a perilous 
•undertaking, and must have been determined on 
with many misgivings; but the conflict was under- 
stood by the priestly party to be a struggle not 
only for continued power but possibly for life itself. 
The arresting party was numerous, the evident in- 
tention being to take into custody not only the 
master, but the whole band of his disciples. 

The first violence offered to his person w T as the 
binding of his arms which he did not resist. After 



99 



he had been led away to the house of Caiaphas to 
undergo an examination before the High Priest, a 
fear of consequences still restrained his captors from 
any assault upon him, until it was seen that it 
could be made with impunity. Then the mockery 
and insult began. The inspired testimony is, ''the 
men that held him mocked him and smote him;" 
*'the servants smote him with the palms of their 
hands." His head was also covered to blindfold 
him, and staggering blows were delivered upon his 
finely chiseled features with shouts of "prophesy 
thou Christ who is it that smote thee," until his 
swollen and discolored countenance looked like that 
of a defeated pugilist. 

Dr. Edershaim has quite satisfactorily shown 
that a head dress was one article of his apparel. It 
was probably similar to the "kefiyeh" of the Arab, 
a piece of some kind of fine cloth three or four feet 
square or larger, cast over the head, and retained 
in place by a fillet crossing the forehead just above 
the eyes, and falling down over the shoulders be- 
hind to the waist. This could be thrown forward 
and thus be made to conceal the face without the 
use of force. Thus probably was he blindfolded. 
Others tore out his beard by the roots in handfuls 
as long before predicted. 

The grave and dignified members of the council, 
instead of rebuking the ruffianly conduct of the 
menials, mingled in the brutality by spitting into 
his face. It is hard to conceive of any thing more 
expressive of utter contempt and of unutterable 
abhorrence, than the cool discharge repeated again 



100 



and again of the filthiest slime of filthy throats 
upon his visage. They soon forgat their dignity, 
and joined in the grossest brutalities with the vulgar 
menials. Truly he was one "despised of men," 
"whom the nation abhorreth," "a slave of rulers." 
This scene occurring first in the house of Caiaphas 
was repeated in the council; where Jewish hate 
reveled in insult until it w r as weary. The poison of 
hate was in their spitting like the froth of the old 
serpent. 

When an offender is in the hands of an excited 
mob such ruffianism may be expected; but it never 
in any other case took place in a court room, and 
in the presence of the judges, whose it w T as to pro- 
tect a prisoner until the law delivered him to exe- 
cution. The like never occurred before or since in a 
hall of justice and in open court. 

Then after the Jewish people had manifested be- 
fore Pilate their desire that he should be crucified, 
he was stripped and scourged by the governor's ex- 
press direction, though not condemned, accused 
only. 

The word used by the evangelists in describing 
the punishment indicates that the whip used had 
several thongs. When the punishment was to be 
made unusually severe, these thongs were loaded 
with bits of bone or lead. "Flagellis plumbatis 
verberare" is the Koman description of it; the 
Greek word used corresponds. That this severer 
form was used with Jesus is rendered probable by 
two reasons. 



101 



Pilate was seeking to satisfy the fury of the 
people by the greatest possible barbarity of the inflic- 
tion, in order that he might escape the necessity of 
crucifying the prisoner, .whom he knew to be inno- 
cent of the charge made against him. He might as 
well have attempted to turn the current of the 
Jordan back. 

Another reason for thinking that the severer 
form of scourging was used with Jesus, is the fact 
that he fell under the weight of the cross on the 
way to execution. The Roman scourging was 
not limited, as was the Jewish, to forty lashes, and 
the soldier who administered the blows was not 
lacking in barbarity if he was like his comrades. 
The lashes were probably continued until signs of 
collapse appeared; strong and sturdy criminals 
sometimes sinking in unconsciousness under the 
blows. Every lash probably tore the flesh and 
blood filled the furrows ploughed by the cruel thongs. 

The history of the trial of Jesus before Pilate, 
in whom solely was vested the power of life and 
death, shows that his sincere wishes and earnest 
efforts in favor of the prisoner were of no avail 
whatever against the determination of his accusers, 
not a mob of the lower class, but an assembly com- 
prised of the influential men and leaders of the na- 
tion. They were able to play upon his fears of the 
insane jealousy of Tiberius, who would not hesitate 
to desolate a province, and soak its soil with blood, 
rather than tolerate a pretender to royalty. When 
he expressed his utter unwillingness to sacrifice 
"this just man' 1 to the passions of an excited pop- 



102 



ulace, and solemnly washed his hands of the guilt 
of such a crime, they were ready to assume the re- 
sponsibility of his blood. In whatever direction he 
turned, hundreds of voices cried: "His blood be on 
us and on our children." His last scheme for the 
deliverance of the prisoner having failed, he ascended 
the judgment seat and gave sentence that it should 
be as they desired; that Barabbas should be re- 
leased, and Jesus crucified. So they preferred a rebel 
against Home and a murderer. The judgmeut of 
Pilate and his sentence in the case are at such vari- 
ance, that it is difficult to believe that both pro- 
ceeded out of the same mouth at the same time: 
his verdict being, not guilty in the slightest degree; 
and his sentence as judge, let him be crucified. 

After this final decision, all protection was with- 
drawn from Jesus, he having enjoyed none during 
the whole process of trial, and he was abandoned 
to the will of the soldiers, to whom the idea of a 
claimant to the Jewish throne was too ridiculous. 
By a trumpet call the whole band was assembled, 
whose full complement was a hundred men, than 
whom a more brutal and pitiless horde could not 
be found, and the innocent prisoner was used to 
furnish sport for them as Sampson was used by the 
Philistines. 

The details of their conduct need not be de- 
scribed. It is enough to say they rivaled the worst 
indignities heaped upon him by the Jews ; and that 
the sight of them moved Pilate to unusual pity, and 
led him to bring him forth in his mock-royal attire 
again to the people after his formal condemnation^ 



103 



and reassert his entire innocence, thinking if the 
people can but see him abused as I now see him, 
they would certainly relent. 

His words were: "Behold I bring him forth to 
you that ye may know that I find no fault in him, 
no nor yet Herod." Herod to whose jurisdiction he 
belongs, is not afraid of him as a rival for his 
throne. Can he ever pretend to be king, after being 
disgraced by every conceivable insult and indignity, 
after being stripped and publicly whipped? There 
can be no danger from him now; why demand his 
death? Can anything be more ridiculous than claim- 
ing to be king when a whole people thus reject 
him? There is no danger from him now. His ap- 
peal might as well have been made to the rocks, 
and mountains. 

No other prisoner in Eoman history was made 
to undergo this species of cruelty. The crown of 
thorns, the play sceptre, the robe of majesty, the 
salutations of mockery, the anointing with spittle, 
the rude blows of a boisterous soldiery form a chap- 
ter of history enacted but once in all time. The 
miscalled mockery was more properly torture, and 
it began in the house of Caiaphas, and was prac- 
tically continuous until the cross received him. 

"Many bulls have compassed me: Strong bulls 
of Basham have beset me round. They gaped upon 
me with their mouths as a ravening and roaring 
lion; for dogs have compassed me." Every face 
was swollen with hatred, every eye glared upon him 
like the eye of a wild beast : Voices clamored against 



104 



him like bellowing bulls, or roaring lions. "And I 
looked for some to take pity, but there was none; 
for comforters, but I found none." Ps. 69-20. 

The history says, "they were instant with loud 
voices; they cried out all at once; and the voices of 
them and of the chief priests prevailed." 

Where were the thousands indebted to him for 
inestimable benefits, even for life restored? or those 
released from rayless dungeons of blindness, or from 
life-long silence and a living death? Could they have 
forgotten their deliverer; that not a single voice was 
heard in his behalf? Where were the few who had 
just declared and with the utmost sincerity, that 
they would sooner die with him than deny him? 
No, they had not forgotton, but so terrible was the 
whirlwind of opposition, that they were not able to 
stand against the pitiless storm, but like reeds bowed 
before the blast. 

Even the eleven intimates forsook him : but one 
saw him die. The cyclone of insane fury swept the 
whole space, but one object was left standing; it 
was a cross. Sin never so raged, never so showed 
its exceeding sinfulness. The rejection of Jesus Christ 
is the climax of rebellion against heaven. 

His death shocked the celestial host, if men can 
judge from the holy indignation expressed in the 
eyes of the mighty angel of the resurrection, dis- 
turbed the course of nature, and shook the throne 
of God. He suffered without sympathy, he stood 
alone. Few paid attention to the malefactors: 
there was as it were but one cross. The attention 



105 



of all was drawn to the central figure, and around 
it was gathered a circle of hissing serpents, each 
anxious to deliver the fatal stroke. 

As the rod set up to draw the fire of the skies 
and protect the dwelling, must stand alone, and 
perfectly; insulated so Jesus stood alone when he 
delivered us by his death, when heaven's lightnings 
were discharged against human sin. He stood alone 
when he became surety for man before the burning 
throne, and he stood alone when he paid the debt. 

Arrived at the place oi execution, a drink of medi- 
cated wine was offered him, furnished, it may be, by 
the tender sex, the women of Jerusalem, to alleviate 
those sufferings which none could witness without 
horror, or remember without a shudder. This was 
refused by him, and another potion had been pro- 
vided, the notice of which has covered with ever- 
lasting infamy the party suspected of preparing it; 
the priests handled gall-bladders every day. It was 
a vessel of vinegar mingled with gall. Hatred that 
knew no relenting followed him to the very last and 
sought to add to the bitterness of death. It is safe 
to say that in no other case was such a draught 
provided. 

Then it was possible to settle the cross in its 
prepared hole with such violence as would distrain 
the limp and helpless body attached to it, until the 
limbs were almost torn from their sockets. That 
this ever occurred is not matter of record, but that 
it did occur in the case of Jesus is generally under- 
stood. The execution was conducted with unusual 
severity throughout, or to spaak plainly, with un- 



106 



paralleled atrocity. Not a pang was spared that 
human savagery could inflict, or human ingenuity 
could devise. It is safe to say never was such a 
crucifixion, never did hatred so pursue the greatest 
felon. 

The cross was ever before the mind of Jesus 
from the beginning of his ministry, and it was one 
chief subject of his prolonged supplications during 
whole nights; that his humanity "might not fail 
nor be discouraged until he had set judgment in 
the earth." 

The decease which he should accomplish as Jeru- 
salem was evidently the burden of the petitions on 
the night of the transfiguration, which was a whole 
night of prayer, and doubtless had been the burden 
of the other similar whole nights of devotion: yet 
when the dread reality was before him in Gethse- 
mane, without miraculous support, humanity could 
not endure. 

The depth of his anguish was declared by the 
portents accompanying it, whose terrible force could 
not be better expressed than by the symptoms of 
dissolving nature ; such as will attend "the wreck of 
matter, and the crash of worlds." All came upon 
him in dread reality that was symbolized by the 
flaming sword of Eden, the fire from heaven, and the 
dreadful phenomena of Sinai, the earthquake, thun- 
ders and lightnings and fire. 

The great transaction ending in the death of 
Jesus Christ was consummated principally in the 
realm of the unseen. The nature of the sorrow which 
destroyed his life is revealed in the Gethsemane 



107 



agony, of which but a single glimpse is afforded.. 
How great, how protracted, how dire it was is not 
for mortals to understand in this world. 

Concealment was the order of the divine pro- 
ceedure in the whole ministry of the Savior. His 
personality was so covered up that his intimate 
disciples did not recognize it, until his ascension 
convinced them that he was the supreme God. His 
power was more concealed than revealed by his 
mighty works. His omniscience and omnipresence 
were obscurely but satisfactorily intimated. A veil 
was over his whole individuality which flesh and 
blood could not penetrate: only the Father in 
heaven could reveal what was enclosed by it. His 
suffering its nature and its depth are beyond human 
understanding. Himself was satisfied tha.t "it is 
finished." Cheerfully would he endure all again if 
by so doing the salvation of men could be better 
secured, and the way of return to God be made 
more easy for the penitent sinner. The father also 
accepted it as a full satisfaction to justice, and im- 
mediately bestowed the mighty influences of the 
Holy Spirit purchased by the expiatory death to 
operate on the hearts of men to the end of time. 

The most astonishing feature of the whole scene 
in Pilate's court and on Calvary was the indescriba- 
ble, the divine patience of the holy sufferer. Usually 
the agony and despair of the victims dictated the 
most fearful imprecations. The delicate organiza- 
tion of the Nazarene, sensitive beyond parallel, felt 
intensely. Agony has its signs, and leaves its mark 
in the deathly pallor of the countenance, the quiv- 



108 



ering lips and the fainting frame which revealed his 
anguish; but not a murmur or complaint escaped 
his lips. He was silent in his woe, and his divine 
patience on the cross was more amazing than his 
mightiest miracles or than them all combined. 
Nothing more strongly demonstrated his heavenly 
origin. 

The dying thief was converted by the sight, as 
was Simeon compelled reluctantly to aid in bearing 
the cross. It sealed the conversion of Joseph of 
Arimathea, and of Nicodemus and of the Centurion 
in charge, and made the souls of thousands tremble, 
who were ready on the Pentecost and after, to con- 
fess faith in him. Of all the wonders of the day, the 
supernatural darkness, the earthquake, the rending 
rocks and opened temple veil, none were more amaz- 
ing than the silent suffering of the Holy One. 

And amid the excruciating agonies of the cross 
he was pitying others. He comforted the despairing 
thief, his remaining parent, and his sympathizing 
disciple. Every breath of his lips, every throb of 
his heart was for others. As his eye had, at the 
beginning of his sufferings, surveyed his murderers 
one by one, his soul had been anguished for them, 
and the prayer had broken from the lips that suf- 
fering could not open, which is the wonder of the 
ages, "Father, forgive them, they know not what 
they do." His love had no periods of ebb and flow, 
no low tide or interval, was ever at high-water 
mark, and was as manifest and wonderful as his 
patience while on the cross. 



109 



The crucifixion took place at the third hour of 
the day; but nine hours remaining before the sab- 
bath began ; there was not sufficient time left for an 
ordinary execution. The crucified usually lingered 
about twenty-four hours, generally longer. It became 
necessary on this occasion to break the legs of the male- 
factors, which was done in the most severe manner, 
with one fracture above the knee and one below, that 
they might be taken away, and still living and breath- 
ing be cast into some hastily prepared grave, per- 
haps into one of the excavations in the potter's 
field with the body of Judas, and covered out of 
sight, that nothing might be left to offend the taste, 
or pollute the air on the coming Sabbath. Accord- 
ing to the plan of his enemies, this treatment 
awaited the body of Jesus, had not God ordered 
otherwise; Is. Lin: 9 The vindictive rage of the priestly 
partly, coupled with fear of the escape of their vic- 
tim in some unforseen manner, had led them to rush 
the execution without regard to humanity or decency. 
Mortal sin is generally committed in mad haste. 
The priests probably anticipated and gloated over 
the expected mangling of his body ; but had to con- 
tent themselves with guarding it in a chamber 
of rock. 

The disciples of Jesus were evidently persuaded 
that their leader being lord of life and death could 
not be put to death by his enemies or by any power 
of man, and indeed that he could not die. The 
demonstration was before their eyes daily, and in 
this conviction they Avere doubtless unwaveringly 
established for good and substantial reasons, and 



110 



they were correct in their belief. In case of any 
other human body a copious sweat, tinged with 
blood, such as occurred in Gethsemane, would have 
been the precursor of speedy if not immediate death. 
But death had no dominion over him. "In him was 
life" in its very essence; that mysterious principle 
which no human philosophy can define or explain 
resided in him as its primeval fountain and original 
source. He is "the living God," he is "the life." 

He did not die by anything that man inflicted; 
the hand of man did not prevail against him. His 
resurrection life demonstrated that his unchanged 
body could live because connected with him whose 
life is imperishable. 

Our Lord suffered at the hand of God. He did 
not complain of his bodily sufferings, his attention 
at least was not engrossed by them. He hardly 
seemed to realize them. The agony was of another 
nature entirely: he did complain of suffering from 
the hand of God, whose alone it is to exact the 
punishment of sin. The darkened sun, the rending 
rocks, the quaking earth but feebly expressed his 
agony. 

The curse of God is infinitely worse than the 
Koman cross. The eternal Father to whom "ven- 
geance belongeth" was the priest, the son was the 
lamb ; the ordeal must have been as terrible for the 
one as the other. Human nature, though supported 
by the divine, could endure no more. 

Inspiration draws a veil before the great trans- 
action, which it is profane for mortals to attempt 
to lift. All that it is necessary for us to know is 



Ill 



that Jesus paid our debt to the last farthing, until 
he could say "it is finished," and the Father in 
token of acceptance could immediately send the 
Holy Spirit purchased by the blood of Calvary, to 
lead men to Christ as long as sinners are found 
upon earth. 

The seven words uttered by the Savior while on 
the cross are not to be distributed among the six 
hours of the passion as having been spoken at inter- 
vals. The prayer for the forgiveness of his execu- 
tioners was made at the commencement of his 
sufferings when the fierce swing and plunge of the 
cross into its prepared hole dislocated more than 
one of the principal joints of the frame; or, if the verb 
expressing his speech be taken as in the imperfect tense, 
"he was saying" it would imply that the prayer was 
repeated at the successive steps of the process. It 
'may well be construed as in the imperfect tense. 
The six hours of the passion were passed in abso- 
lute silence, this silence and submission without 
word or groan, making his death more wonderful 
than his wonderful life. "As a sheep before her 
shearers is dumb, so he opened not his mouth." 

As the end was approaching he roused from 
his mute agony, as the dying often awake from 
stupor just before the end comes, and the remain- 
ing six words followed in close succession: the first 
revealing the nature of the torment which had been 
consuming his life: "Eli, Eli, lama sabbachthani." 
He did not mention his bodily sufferings, or seem 
hardly to regard them. He next called for drink 
and drank freely, as the Greek word implies, of the 



112 



vinegar offered, that he might be able to speak dis- 
tinctly. He then spoke words of encouragement to 
the penitent thief, of filial affection to his mother, 
whom he bequeathed to his beloved disciple stand- 
ing near, entrusting his spirit into his father's 
hands, and expressing a sublime confidence that his 
atonement was sufficient and "finished." He shouted 
finished, a single word in the Greek, and with a loud 
cry he was gone. The most remarkable earthquake 
of all time marked the moment of his departure, and 
the sun shone out with unwonted brilliancy. His 
death was sudden and instantaneous, but not pre- 
mature, his blood, the seat of life, being ready to 
coagulate at once; a result not usually following 
for twenty-four hours. 

That he had not seemed to realize his bodily 
sufferings, at least that his attention was not oc~ 
cupied with them, is plain from the history. The 
men of all ages were before his view ; their sins and 
miseries pressed upon his spirit. These indescribable 
matters absorbed his attention. His cry "I thirst" 
fixes the time when bodily sensations again affected 
his consciousness. The blood having lost its vital- 
izing principle accumulated upon the heart until it 
ruptured the organ; and when the soldier's spear- 
pierced the pericardium, flowed out in clots and 
water; the strangest earthquake of all time marked 
the moment of his decease. 



113 



CHAPTEE VII. 



[/Reprinted from "Sketches from the Life of Jesus," issued in 1891.] 



Atonement. 



Atonement for human sin by the sufferings of 
the Son of God is the doctrine which distinguishes 
the religion of the Bible from all other religions. 
Of. course this doctrine has then been prominent in 
all the ages; atonement by blood probably being 
the first revelation from heaven made after the fall 
of our first parents, and before their expulsion from 
Eden . This accounts for the universal prevalence of 
bloody sacrifices from the remotest antiquity; as de- 
rived from the immemorial traditions of the race. 
While the significance of the ceremony was early 
lost; yet the practice of sacrificial rites prevaded 
the world. The Bible furnishes the satisfactory ex- 



114 



planation of their significance; this form of worship 
being retained after its meaning had lapsed from 
the memory of man. 

With the selection of Israel as the chosen na- 
tion, this truth was made the central orb, about 
which all their institutions were arranged. The 
altar, down which an everlasting stream of new 
and living blood was pouring, and the most Holy 
place, in which the only offering was new and living 
blood, were the arcana of Judaism. The long suc- 
cession of inspired prophets kept the subject alive 
ever, by the most vivid forecasts of the coming de- 
liverer, who, in the process of time, would accom- 
plish the great redemption by the shedding of his 
own blood. Ever this cardinal truth has been made 
prominent above all else; that a redemption by 
suffering and blood would in the fulness of time be 
made, by which the results following transgression 
would be remedied; and man be restored to the 
favor of an offended God. From the many passages 
enjoining an offering typical of the great atoning 
sacrifice, we select the following, as describing mi- 
nutely and thoroughly the whole process required 
of the worshiper: 

"And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying: If a 
soul sin, and commit a trespass against the Lord, 
and lie unto his neighbor in that which was deliv- 
ered him to keep, or in fellowship, or in a thing 
taken away by violence, or hath deceived his neigh- 
bor, or have found that which was lost, and lieth 
concerning it, and sweareth falsely; in any of all 
these that a man doeth, sinning therein; then it 



i 



115 



shall be because he hath sinned, and is guilty, that 
he shall restore that which he took violently away, 
or the thing which he hath deceitfully gotten, or 
that which was delivered him to keep, or the lost 
thing which he found, or all that about which he 
has sworn falsely; he shall even restore it in the 
principal, and shall add the fifth part more thereto, 
and give it unto him to whom it appertaineth, in 
the day of his trespass offering. And he shall bring 
his trespass offering unto the Lord, a ram without 
blemish out of the flock, with thy estimation, for a 
trespass offering unto the priest; and the priest 
shall make an atonement for him before the Lord; 
and he shall be forgiven, for anything of all that 
he hath done, in trespassing therein."— Lev. vi:l-7. 
The offender contemplated in this statute is a 
truly penitent man. He gives good evidence of this 
by his voluntary confession of his crime. The repe- 
tition of this law in Deut. contains an additional 
item, deciding to whom the money should be paid, 
in case of the decease of the injured party: showing 
that this law had reference to crimes long concealed, 
and voluntarily confessed. The law for the detected 
thief was different, requiring repayment of five oxen 
for an ox, and four sheep for a sheep. The man 
described in this enactment is guilty of having de- 
frauded his neighbor long years ago; and though 
perhaps suspected at the time; yet, by dint of lying 
and swearing falsely, he has managed to allay sus- 
picion, and to retain his standing in society, and 
his reputation as an honest man; until the injured 



116 



neighbor has passed away. The growing burden 
upon his conscience has in the meantime become 
past endurance. 

Worn with a secret, which has long been con- 
suming his life, he at length makes full and volun- 
tary confession of his sin, aggravated by reiterated 
falsehood and perjury. It is not necessary to say, 
that men will endure agonies, before they will con- 
fess ; and that guilty secrets are not divulged, until 
death unlocks the lips; and often are carried unre- 
vealed to the grave. The mortification of discovery, 
and the consequent scorn of the w 7 orld, and the vin- 
dictive hatred of the injured, are too terrible to be 
encountered; were there not a more formidable 
array of condemnation in the anticipated doom of 
the divine judgment. 

This transgressor, urged by anguish of con- 
science, at length makes confession of his crime; 
and gives another evidence of true repentance, by 
full restitution to the injured party, or his heirs, or 
to the priest; in case that they cannot be found. 
He restores the principal and adds the fifth part 
more thereto; and gives it to him, to whom it ap- 
pertained. He is thus correcting the wrong done 
to his fellow-man, as far as is possible. A man can 
not be truly penitent, and retain in his possession 
that which of right belongs to his neighbor. The 
addition of a fifth part more to the original sum 
would be a sufficient increment among a people, 
who were not allowed to exact usury of one an- 
other. Zaccheus, in the freshness of his new obedi- 
ence, restored four-fold like a convicted thief; nor 



117 



could his conscience be quieted with less; though 
this law, which we are considering, was framed to 
meet such cases as his. In cases of restitution, the 
tendency is to a generous abundance; rather than a 
bare equivalent. Before God can be approached, 
the thief must disgorge freely, and beyond the bare 
amount due. 

He, who makes humble confession and full repa- 
ration, from the impulse of his own convictions, 
gives satisfactory evidence of sincere and genuine 
repentance for the wrong, of which he has been 
guilty. 

The offender described in this statute was then 
a sincere penitent ; but was he forgiven in consider- 
ation of his repentance? Human law has no longer 
a claim against him; nor can it inflict a penalty 
upon him in anywise. He has made all right with 
his neighbor, and thus escapes liability at the hand 
of civil justice; but he has now an account to settle 
with God, at the bar of divine justice. The stain 
of sin is upon his soul; the law of God has been 
violated. One, who had been guilty of the greatest 
outrage upon his fellow-man, said: "Against thee, 
even thee only have I sinned ; and done this evil in 
thy sight." Wrong done to man is done against 
God, whose law is not advice, which a man may 
take or refuse as he may please. Advice is advice, 
which no one is under obligation to accept; but law 
is law, and is violated at peril. 

The account with God can be settled with blood 
only. His forgiveness is not bestowed because the 
transgressor sincerely repents; but "the priest shall 



118 



make an atonement for him ; and it shall be for- 
given him, for all that he has done sinning therein. ' y 

To pardon a transgressor in consideration of 
his sincere repentance is to abandon the law alto- 
gether. When an earthly executive issues a pardon 
to a criminal proved guilty beyond a doubt, if the 
evidence has been fairly taken and considered, he is 
setting aside the law and making it null and void; 
and doing more to demoralize society, than the 
guilty criminal has done. 

How many regard the law of God as being as 
flexible as the laws of the country! which Christ 
declares to stand firmer than the heaven and the 
earth. He, who disobeys it, rushes upon the thick 
bosses of Jehovah's buckler; casts himself under the 
wheels of the car, on which the throne of the divine 
majesty rests; and stands a pronounced rebel 
against the Holy God, who issues no pardon of 
transgression, but on the ground of satisfaction to 
the stern and inflexible law. 

The religion of the Bible has demanded the same 
compliances in all ages : repentance toward God and 
faith in an atoning Savior. Relaxation of its re- 
quirements has never been made, and is impossible. 
It is the same in all time. All the light to be 
gathered from the Old Testament on this subject 
of atonement, is to be found in the consideration of 
the several steps commanded for the making the re- 
quired offering. 

1. The animal designated for the altar was a 
lamb of a year old; not yet mature. It was the 
animal selected on account of its innocence, being 



119 



thus a type of the future Kedeemer. Unprovided 
with the weapons of aggression or means of escape, 
it relies on man for protection; and flees to him 
for shelter more than any other of the brute crea- 
tion. The dove has its sharp beak, the cow its 
formidable horns; but the lamb has only man for 
its defence. Hence it properly represents innocence. 

And then it is unresisting. The bullock, on its 
way to the altar of God, often became furious at 
the smell of blood; and resisting with loud bellow- 
ings, had to be forced to the fatal spot; but the 
little lamb willingly foil owed its master to the bloody 
altar; and yielded up its life without resistance. 
This is true of no other animal than the lamb, 
which was thus a picture of him, who "was led as a 
lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep dumb before 
its shearers, so, opened he not his mouth." 

But the chief reason for its selection was the tie 
that existed between it and its master. An affection 
for brutes is not unworthy of humanity. The hor ; e 
and the dog are often regarded with evident love 
among the most cultivated nations of the day ; they 
were both forbidden to the Israelite; and the lamb 
became the recipient of the attachment of a pastoral 
people, as might be expected. 

The animal without blemish and without spot 
was a privileged inmate of the tent, the playmate 
of the children, delighting them with its gambols, 
and partaking with them of their cheer. Possessed 
of the most delicate auditory provision, it knew the 
voice of its master; and could never be deceived by 
any imitation of sound from a stranger; but recog- 



120 



iiizing his call at all times, bounded to the shepherd, 
whenever he approached. What a picture of pas- 
toral life is presented in Nathan's parable to David! 
"The poor man had nothing save one little ewe 
lamb, which did eat of his meat, and drank of his 
cup, and lay in his bosom, and was unto him as a 
daughter." No society for the suppression of cruelty 
to animals was needed among the Israelites; the 
law of Moses required the greatest kindness to the 
brutes. "Thou shalt not seethe a kid in its moth- 
er's milk," "When thou findest a bird's nest by the 
way; thou mayest take unto the young; but thou 
shalt not take unto thee the dam," are instances. 
The Jew loved his little lamb exceptionally; and 
therefore God chose it for the animal of sacrifice. 

Imagine now the scene at an atonement. Im- 
pelled by intolerable remorse, the offender has con- 
fessed a crime of long ago ; and knowing that God, 
in order to its forgiveness, requires the sacrifice of 
a life, takes the perfect animal for a victim. He has 
to tear it away from the embraces of children ; 
and leads it off amid the weeping farewells of the 
family. No stain of guilt is upon the lamb; yet it 
is to die for sin not its own. An innocent being is 
to suffer in the stead of the guilty. The owner is 
saying to himself, I am the offender; God might 
justly require my life; but graciously accepts an- 
other life in the place of mine. This substitution 
became very evident as the ceremony progressed. 

Next, the offender was required to confess his 
sin publicly; while his hand rested on the head of 
the lamb. All the particulars of the misdeed were 



121 



honestly and truely recited; the opportunity, the 
temptation, the secresy, the inward contest, the final 
determination, the crime, the subsequent falsehood, 
and the perjury. Every step was humbly and sor- 
rowfully published: and during the whole of this 
confession, the hand was on the head of the victim. 
The little animal by no means threw off its master's 
hand, which had often fondled and fed it. 

The penitent with many tears divulged his guilt, 
adoptingthe words of some devotional portion of the 
word of God: acknowledging that the sword of divine 
justice might properly cut him down; and that the fire 
unquenchable of the divine wrath might consume him; 
but praying that God would accept instead the life 
being offered. While the Avords were on his lips, 
[that God's justice might strike him, and his wrath, 
like fire consume him,] the knife of the priest struck 
the unresisting lamb: and it was prepared for the 
fire. j Precisely what the man had confessed might 
befall himself, befell the lamb. The fire on the altar 
was the emblem of the eternal fire, having been 
kindled from heaven in the wilderness, and burning 
for centuries without extinction. Korah and his 
company perished for the crime of using other fire, 
than the fire of God. 

Under the guise of this simple ceremony weue 
veiled the great doctrines of imputation and sub- 
stitution. The laying on of hands was understood 
to imply that in the act, something was communi- 
cated from the principal to the recipient: as when 
the Holy Ghost was given in the laying on of 
hands, and as when Jacob blessed the sons of 



122 



Joseph by laying on of hands. In this case the 
guilt, in the sense of liability to punishment, was 
considered as passing over from the transgessor to 
the victim: and the lamb, assuming the guilt of the 
crime, was treated as the offending party. 

The actual criminality belongs ever to the cul- 
prit himself, and cannot be transferred. Under the 
administration of Jehovah, the liability to suffer- 
ing and punishment can be shifted. The phraseol- 
ogy of the Bible is not that our sins were imputed 
to Christ ; but that they were laid upon him : an 
expression evidently derived from this ceremony and 
equivalent to imputed. The lamb was regarded as 
a substitute for the criminal: and could it have 
spoken, might have said, my dear master I willingly 
die for thee and in thy stead: thy life is required, 
and I will surrender mine in place of thine. 

As its body quivered in the agonies of death, 
the transgressor could but feel: this fearful doom I 
had merited ; but God accepts another life in place 
of the one I have forfeited. As its body was cast 
into the fire of the altar, the master could but feel, 
this doom was justly mine; but God has appointed 
another to endure it in my place. They knew as 
well as we, that the blood of bulls and goats could 
never take away sin; and that these offerings were 
but pictures of the great atoning offering to be 
made in the future. Probably no Jew ever went 
through this ceremony without tears; to do other- 
wise than weep seems quite impossible. 

This whole ceremony in all its parts was an af- 
fecting representation of the work of Jesus Christy 



123 



cut off in his young manhood; slain by men; but 
offered and consumed in the fire of the divine wrath; 
and suffering for the sins of man imputed to him, 
or laid upon him, the sinless one. Such was the 
only service, by which God could be approached: 
the only worship he would receive. 

It is contained in this delineation of the work 
of Christ; that he suffered the identical curse which 
man would have undergone; had the judgment fallen 
upon him. This is the unquestionable truth. Our 
Lord was incapable of remorse, despair or selfish 
rage and fury, which the lost are represented as ex- 
periencing; but these are not the penalty of God's 
law; they are but its adjuncts and results. The 
dire penalty due to man for his sin, the curse of 
God Jesus endured : he drank the very cup prepared 
for us. The very sword, that would have smitten 
us, smote him; the consuming fire of God's ven- 
geance kindled upon him. 

Jesus is called the lamb in the writings of Peter 
and Paul and John; and no less than twenty-seven 
times in the one book of Revelation. He is said to 
bear our sins, which can only mean, that he bore 
the punishment due to us for our sins; which is the 
sense of the phrase throughout the books of Moses. 
His death is called a sacrifice; and we are said to 
be saved by his blood-shedding and death. To this 
view agrees the otherwise inexplicable fact of his un- 
paralleled mental suffering. 

We learn the depth and intensity of those suf- 
ferings from the prodigies which attended his death. 
The sun had risen as usual, and shone with its 



124 



ordinary vernal brightness. No eclipse was possible 
at the passover moon. The fury of men had done 
its work ; and their victim had been hung amid un- 
exampled insults upon the cross. For three hours 
taunt and mockery had swept over him like a tem- 
pest; but at its meridian height the sun lost its 
light; until the obscurity was probably like the 
gloom of a total eclipse; and a pall of mourning 
overspread the whole land ; not from any interven- 
ing body cutting off its beams. No mass of ob- 
structing cloud concealed it: it may have been vis- 
ible in the sky : but for three hours it shed but a 
faint and deathly glimmer until the victim's death, 
when it suddenly resumed an unusual glory and 
splendor. The darkness extended to the southward 
past the city of Alexandria in Egypt, according to 
Eusebius; and correspondingly far to the north- 
ward, probably past the coasts of Tyre and Sidon, 
covering the territory reached by the rumor of the 
wonderful ministry and more wonderful man of 
Nazareth; thus making the whole of Syria a death 
chamber for the son of God. It plainly suggested 
that "either the frame, of the world was being dis- 
solved, or the God of nature was suffering." 

At the instant of his loud cry and death a groan 
came from the caverns of the quaking earth, than 
which was never sound more appalling, resulting 
from the rending of the mighty ledges of rock on 
which Jerusalem was built. A rock may be more 
easily split; but no power that has marked the 
earth within the age of man could rend a mighty 
mass across its natural seams and strata. Earth 



125 



has felt no such shock since the days of geologic 
upheavel. "The centurion and they that were with 
him," men of iron, "feared greatly." The crash 
must have been louder than ordinary thunder, and 
far more dire and terrifying. 

At the same instant in the temple the grand 
and heavy veil made of purple and blue and fine- 
twined linen, the strongest material known, which, 
according to Josephus, was sixty feet long and 
thirty feet high, and of the thickness of the palm 
of a man's hand, was rent in twain throughout: 
and the rent began at the top. Scores of human 
hands in united effort could not have effected it. 
To the Jews this must have been as conclusive a 
testimony as if the firmament which hides the throne 
of God had been rent, revealing the unseen. At the 
same moment the doors of tombs were wrenched 
open, and the bones of saints moved on their 
stony beds. 

The sufferings of Christ are the mystery of time, 
and will be of eternity also. These are the things 
which the "angels desire to look into." Moses and 
Elias, direct from the world of glory, talked with 
the Master "of his decease which he should accom- 
plish at Jerusalem;" it was the one absorbiug topic 
in that bright world whence they had come. One 
scene will stand fresh as yesterday in the memory 
of saints and angels to all eternity, the scene 
of Calvary. 

The tragedy which opened with such a storm of 
pitiless cruelty and abuse, ended in the terror of its 
promoters. The centurion in charge felt that these 



126 



portents were connected with the death of the sin- 
less one, as did also a multitude who returned from 
the scene, smiting on their breasts. The agony which 
produced the death sweat in Gethsemane prevailed 
with intensified force during the hours of darkness, 
and at length ruptured the walls of the aching 
heart and ended the life. In the few instances in 
which a distant resemblance has been observed to 
this sweat of blood, death has immediately super- 
vened. The Savior's strength had been reinforced 
by angelic ministration, and his life prolonged until 
he could say, "It is finished." 

Nature sympathizes with God only. When the 
soul of a man is crushed with grief, the body, the 
only matter over which it has complete control, 
trembles, weeps, faints or is convulsed. When Jesus 
died nature responded in sympathy with signs un- 
mistakable. Earth felt the wound with a shud- 
der of convulsion, and the eye of day closed in a 
gloom akin to night. This spasm of nature con- 
veyed no description unwarranted by the fact. It 
but feebly expressed the horror of the deed. 

The cross throws a new light on the character 
of our God : and demonstrates the tenderness of his 
love. Love is shown to be the essence of his 
divinity, the impulsive power of his nature, the soul 
of his attributes, the true inwardness of his being. 
Mercy is love in the most soul-subduing form the 
human mind can conceive. Wonder at the infinities 
of his nature, the immensity of his works, and at 
his illimitable presence, ceases; the whole soul is 
absorbed in the greater wonder of his love. 



127 



CHAPTER VIII. 



The Resurrection of Jesus. 



The resurrection of Jesus Christ might have been 
accomplished secretly, unwitnessed by the testimony 
which the world- possesses; but then the race would 
lack the evidence that he had triumphed; that his 
sufferings entered into his original plan; and that 
his enemies by inflicting them had but fulfilled his 
own intention. His career would have ended in un- 
mitigated ignoming and gloom. There would have 
been evidence sufficient of his resurrection from the 
dead, if no exhibition of his resurrected person 
had been afforded. He had died seemingly under 
the frown of heaven, and his previously imper- 
turbable composure had forsaken him. The cloud 
hung over him and deepened and thickened to 
the last, when he complained that God had for- 
saken him. The hopes of his disciples went out 
with his life, and when he gave up the ghost their 
expectations perished. 



128 



Though his atoning work was complete, and 
could derive no additional efficacy from his open 
resurrection; though it might have occurred in a 
manner eluding the scrutiny of man; yet it pleased 
him to give his followers a glimpse of his triumph 
through witnesses chosen before of God: even this 
the world did not deserve, much as it needed it. 

I. He was truly dead. When it became neces- 
sary to accelerate the death of a crucified wretch, 
it was not permitted by Roman custom to kill him 
outright, and thus put him out of his misery, as 
would be done in christian lands; but their cruelty 
protracted his sufferings as long as possible. The 
legs of the malefactors were broken above and below 
the knee, but the soldiers agreed that Jesus was 
already dead. The drooping head deep sunk upon 
his motionless bosom, the set and staring eyes, the 
gaping mouth, the pendulous body with knees thrust 
forward, and sustained entirely upon the pierced 
hands satisfied them that life had departed. One 
of them however, to make assurance doubly sure, 
buried his spear-head in his shrunken and unpro- 
tected side, piercing it to the heart, Had a spark 
of life remained this wound of itself had been fatal. 

II. His body was mangled beyond the possi- 
bility of resuscitation. It is considered as demon- 
stated that the immediate physical cause of his de- 
cease was rupture of the heart. This alone would 
preclude all chance for the restoration of life. In 
addition there was a cut in the diaphragen of from 
four to six inches in length making an aperture 



129 



sufficient to admit a man's hand : this destroyed 
all possibility of renewed respiration, this function 
depending upon an air-tight chest. 

Besides these two effectual obstacles to reanima- 
tion a third equally forbidding existed in the con- 
dition of the blood. The intensity of mental anguish 
and horror had produced strange derangement in 
the blood even in Gethsemane. Mental anguish had 
threatened life even then, and would have destroyed 
it, had it not been for the ministration of the angel. 
That extreme mental agony has a like effect in or- 
dinary cases has never been ascertained, investiga- 
tion never having been made in this line of research. 
In the case of Jesus the blood was already coagu- 
lated as soon as he died, this result not taking 
place usually under twenty -four hours after decease. 
The loss of blood may have been sufficient to de- 
stroy life; but if not, the remaining supply was not 
of normal character, being no better than water, 
having utterly lost its vitalizing qualities : and to 
all intents the body was a wholly bloodless corpse. 
If a drop remained in its veins it could be only as 
a germ of decay. Probably every drop was lost. 

These three conditions existed in the body of 
Jesus, any one of which was sufficient to make the 
hope of its revivification in any natural way an 
absurdity. Any human body that was ever con- 
signed to the tomb was a subject more likely to be 
restored to life than the body of the crucified Jesus. 
True not a bone was broken; but his mangled re- 
mains were beyond the reach of any power to re- 

-9 



130 



adjust, and restore to life beneath the power of the 
Most High God, which can create, something out of 
nothing. 

III. The body had been safely deposited. "He 
made his grave with, the rich (singular) in his 
death." Near the place of his execution was a new 
sepulchre, in which no body had yet been laid, 
hewn out of the solid rock, and embowered in a 
garden; there was no other tomb in the vicinity. 
Joseph of Arimathea lately become a resident of 
the holy city, had prepared it for himself and 
family. It was a costly tomb, and attractive in its 
surroundings. 

Here Joseph himself bestowed the corpse wrapped 
in linen cloths, with spices enveloping it on every 
side. The common mode of preparing a body was 
to enswathe each limb with its spices in linen 
wrappings, and afterwards similarly to wrap the 
whole in one case. For the lack of time a bed of 
spices had been made upon the floor of the tomb, 
the body laid upon it, and covered with spices, and 
the whole mass enswathed with a long sheet of linen. 

After such a burial a "very great" stone had 
been rolled against the opening; as the tomb lacked 
the door which would have completed the work. 

The enemies of the Nazarene "the rulers" were 
satisfied with the place: it could be made perfectly 
safe. They were not desirous of removing the corpse: 
but by the governor's permission, in order to pre- 
vent any scheme of fraud on the part of the disci- 
ples, they surrounded the spot with a file of Roman 
.soldiers, after examining and being satisfied that 



131 



the tomb actually contained the body. They also 
sealed the stone with the great ,seal of the state, 
the breaking of which was punishable at their will, 
making the body a state prisoner. His own tomb 
thus sealed and stamped Joseph himself could not 
enter. 

These men remembered well our Lord's predic- 
tion of his resurrection. They knew the importance 
of preventing imposition, and were resolved that it 
should not be practiced ; being aware that putting 
him to death was worse than in vain, if he should 
arise from the dead, or if it were generally believed 
that he did. So well did they know this, that they 
spent the Sabbath in perfecting their arrangements. 
It was their evident intention to produce the dead 
body on the third day, to heap fresh insults upon 
the lifeless clay, and perhaps drag it through the 
streets of Jerusalem, and cast it out to their Gehenna, 
or to the beasts of the field and fowls of the air. 
This production of the corpse appeared to them 
necessary for their justification in the eyes of man}' 
of the people, who had perhaps inwardly shuddered 
at what had occurred, as well as for their own sat- 
isfaction; for there was still a possibility that he 
might prove to have been the Christ. All that could 
be done to guard and preserve it was done. 

III. Yet on the third day the body was gone: 
and they accused the disciples of stealing it, while 
these declared that their master had risen from the 
dead. Now if the rulers had known certainly that 
these eleven men had stolen the body, their enmity 
against them would have been a thousand fold more 



182 



severe than it had been against him. The rulers 
were men exasperated to the highest degree of pas- 
sion, more fierce than ravening wolves, having the 
bulk of the nation in sympathy with them, and the 
power in their hands. Eleven of their subjects with- 
out influence or friends break the state seal, steal 
the most important deposit that seal ever guarded, 
charge upon their rulers the commission of the most 
heinous crime ever perpetrated on earth, and what 
comes? Certainly a worse fate than crucifixion. Woe 
to the daring wretches who array themselves against 
the desperation of a company of infuriated tyrants 
with power in their hands, and the nation encour- 
aging them. A ten-fold fiercer attack will overtake 
them. But no such result follows. 

The enemies commenced their assault with an 
impetuosity that broke over every obstacle; but in 
the midst of their career, when their work was but 
half done, they pause, refrain, adopt milder counsels, 
suffer themselves to be stigmatized with guilt that 
lacks a name, and cower before their own weak and 
defenseless subjects. Did ever wild beast stung to 
uncontrollable fury, and dashing at his opponent 
with his glaring eye full upon him, pause in his 
headlong course, stagger, and decline the fight, un- 
less he had received his mortal wound? Let the 
lion make his onset, get one taste of blood, and he 
is at once irresistible; he will assuredly complete 
his begun work of destruction. If he retreats, he 
has received his death wound. 

Between the tone of the rulers toward Jesus 
Christ and their tone toward his infinitely more ob- 



133 



noxious disciples a few days later, there is an im- 
mense difference. At one time it was "his blood be 
on us and on our children," and soon after it was 
"Kefrain from these men; if this counsel and work 
be of God ye cannot overthrow it," a sentiment 
unanimous with them. Ah ! they had met with that 
which made them pause, and suggested moderation. 
The awful prodigies attending the crucifixion made 
them shudder, but did not daunt them. They still 
deliberately took their measures, and pursued them. 
Something more appalling still to them had taken 
place. The prison doors of the grave its everlast- 
ing doors had given way, and the conqueror had 
risen; the bonds of death forming as slight an ob- 
stacle in the way of his resurrection as did the 
weapons of the guard : and they stood like a ruffian 
who has dealt one blow upon his unresisting victim, 
and raised his hand to finish the work of death by 
another; but that hand, instead of descending in 
power, falls nerveless, and the sword drops out of 
its clutches. 

The priests never publicly charged the disciples 
with the theft even when arraigned before them for 
judgment, and do not even allude to it. The story 
of the soldiers bears the marks of falsehood upon 
its face, as they professed to have slept during a 
"very great earthquake," of which disturbance the 
tomb was the center; a disturbance sufficient to 
awaken every sleeper in the city and adjacent vil- 
lages. It did actually awaken Mary Magdalene and 
her companions, who had lodged outside the city in 
some village near, possibly, Bethany. The w r ord 



134 



used by the three synoptists is "she came" to the 
tomb from without the city. That the rulers made 
no attempt to secure the punishment of the soldiers 
for this breach of military law proves them unbe- 
lievers in their own version of the affair. 

V. The eleven disciples were incapable of exe- 
cuting such a scheme. The tale of their enemies 
charges them not only with the rescue of the body, but 
with devising and propagating the whole system of 
Christianity; and that, too,"beginning at Jerusalem." 
Now these men, and they are to be believed when 
they testify against themselves, so far from deceiv- 
ing others, did not themselves believe that their 
master would actually rise from the dead. They 
"were offended because of him," and debated in their 
hearts whether he were not a mere human though 
highly gifted leader, and himself deceived as to his 
own pretentions. They were through fear not pres- 
ent for any length of time at his crucifixion : but 
one of them saw him die. 

All proved traitors to hfm. After his death they 
were afraid to be seen together in a body in the 
streets of the city; and when they met, it was by 
stealth and behind a locked door and by night. 
They were so oppressed by a criminal unbelief, that 
while the announcement of the soldiers convinced 
the priests of his resurrection, the testimony of those 
who had seen him did not convince them. In losing 
Jesus they had lost all ; their fond expectations had 
vanished ; grief had settled in paralyzing stupor 
upon their souls ; and Satan filled their hearts with 
the direst temptations. 



135 



As they believed, the corpse was in the custody 
of friends; and would ever continue to be an infal- 
lible reminder of their own vain hopes, and crush- 
ing disappointment. They did not appreciate the 
indescribably mighty interests that centered around 
and depended upon that helpless clay; and took no 
steps even to preserve it from being cast out. As 
his memory could never be obliterated from their 
minds, every relic of their former guide would be 
precious : but they were too completely stunned even 
to remember, to plan, or as much as to take 
thought. 

Now the story of the priests charges these men 
as the sole authors of Christianity, with plotting 
and devising for forty .days in Jerusalem the bold- 
est imposture ever conceived, and beguiling the 
whole world with it. Other impostors have invaria- 
bly laid their schemes, and felt out their way in 
times of settled indifference concerning them. While 
the world was still, careless and off its guard, they 
have laid deep their ^well-digested plans, and pre- 
pared their imposture. But in the case under con- 
sideration, in the short space of forty days the 
scheme of Christianity was devised, and in the keen 
sunlight of hostile publicity. And when it was born, 
and the woman was ready to be delivered of a man- 
child, who should rule the nations with a rod of 
iron; befoie her stood watching the great dragon, 
ready to devour the fruit of her womb as soon as 
it should appear. And had it been the result of 
mere human invention, it would have been destroyed 



136 



as soon as it saw the light. How was it that it 
was born, in the face of the dragon, and there lived 
and grew to its great destiny? 

The assumptions of the papacy were gradual 
and had the consent of all parties. Mahomet's sys- 
tem was matured amidst the indifference of the 
world, and spread only because political alliance 
gave it an introduction. But can it be supposed 
that honest and simple-hearted men, who had been 
the dupes of the greatest of impostors, should in 
the hour when keen disappointment palsied their 
souls, conspire together to invent, a scheme of de- 
ception, and impose it on the world? No. If their 
master were a deceiver, they were the greatest dupes, 
the most injured of all, and in their absolute dis- 
comfiture they had lost the power to invent, and 
the heart to engage in any public effort. That 
there should be no discrepancy in the statements of 
eleven men, and no treachery among them is in- 
credible. 

Their speech and conduct are such as belong 
only to honesty, sincerity and conviction. They 
accuse themselves of the basest cowardice and 
treachery in the face of repeated professions of at- 
tachment; they acknowledge an unbelief as stubborn 
as the wilful blindness of the rulers; they admit that 
fears had overwhelmed them altogether, and had 
intimidated them to the forgetfalness of every obli- 
gation. They confess that their minds were filled 
with direful temptations and doubts of their mas- 
ter, wmich clung to them with the tenacity which 
the temptations of Satan alone possess over souls 



137 



dispirited, crushed and on the verge of despair. 
They had been afraid to follow him to Jerusalem 
on his last journey thither, and had gone with mis- 
givings; their fears had yielded, and expectations 
had arisen that his great promises of a kingdom 
might at last be realized ; but this last prop of their 
faith was gone ; the huge waves and billows of fear 
had gone over them, and the sea of unbelief had 
swallowed them up. 

Their testimony to the resurrection of Jesus was 
offered amidst tears of the most sincere compunc- 
tion. Themselves they accused as bitterly as they 
condemned the enemies of their master. It were 
easier for them to die by violence than to suppress 
the truth which they had been base enough to be- 
tray, and which the world rejected. They were 
bolder in acknowledging the truth in consequence 
of their former cowardice and in proportion to it. 

VI. Let the change in the feelings and conduct 
of these simple-minded men be considered. From 
the day of the Pantecest more courageous men 
were never seen. They exhibited a bravery far su- 
perior to the physical courage of Alexander, Cesar 
or Bonapart. 

All the vaunted captains of this bloody earth 
fail in the exhibition of an equal heroism. Luther 
at Worms has admirers throughout the christian 
world; but Luther had strong supporters, and he 
knew it. The complexion of political affairs was 
such as to favor him, and render the emperor less 
hasty in obliging the pope. Even Luther's peril 



138 



was far beneath that in which the apostles stood, 
unlearned and ignorant men literally facing a frown- 
ing world. 

What could have elevated them from their ex- 
treme depression of cowardice to the sublimest 
heroism but the certain knowledge that their Lord 
had arisen from the dead? Their conduct shows 
the sincerity of full conviction and absolute knowl- 
edge. Their courage is more admirable from its 
tenderness, and thereby enforces conviction that the 
truth was with them, as they are heard addressing 
the murderers of their Lord and master as ''brethren. " 

They had no earthly motive urging them to 
their chosen course. They sought not wealth; for 
when money was laid at their feet in piles, they 
showed that they would not stoop to pick it up for 
themselves. They sought not authority and com- 
mand; for they might, if so disposed like Eoman 
bishops, have aggrandized themselves more than 
other mortals have ever done: but none of these 
things moved them. They sought martyrdom and 
they found it : they drank of the cup of which their 
Lord had drunk, and were baptized with his baptism. 
Unlike impostors they courted investigation, and 
asserted the truth just where it could be demon- 
strated to be untrue, if that were possible; and es- 
tablished it in the very city in which earth and hell 
had combined to crush it. 

VII. His resurrection from the dead is the most 
wonderful event of his wonderful history. When he 
was born there were wonders in the sky and on the 
earth. When he entered upon his ministry fresh 



139 



wonders marked the period. Every day of the min- 
istry added to the catalogue of marvels, which had 
aroused and electrified the nation. But none of them 
compares with the scene at the tomb on the morn- 
ing of the third day. His resurrection from the 
dead was the greatest miracle ever wrought on this 
earth, of which a human body was the subject. 

The tale of the Roman guard abundantly con- 
firms the history of the evangelists. According -to 
their story the fourth watch of the night had come, 
and all was well. A new quaternion of sentinels 
had been posted to complete the remaining hours 
of duty, from 3 to 6 A. M. The hour of the deepest 
silence of the night had arrived, and idlers from 
curiosity had scattered away. The first faint streaks 
of light were beginning to show in the east, when 
suddenly they fell under the influence of a spell 
which they were wholly unable to resist; they became 
motionless in their tracks, incapable of joining one 
another in order to act together; incapable of 
speech or outcry; indeed they breathed with the 
greatest difficulty ; it was impossible to say how 
long the spell lasted, but the time seemed long; and 
had it been longer they would all have been dead 
men. Had a whole cohort of soldiers been present 
they could have done nothing. The.y saw nothing 
of what passed within the rocky walls, and saw no 
living form emerge from it. After a seemingly long 
season, during which they breathed with the greatest 
difficulty and stood petrified the spell was broken, 
and the increasing light revealed the fact that the 
tomb was empty, and needed no further guard. 



140 



Its occupant was gone, veiled in the mantle of in- 
visibility; all natural laws yielding to his con- 
venience. 

It is not necessary to suppose that the properties 
of the matter composing the body of the Christ un- 
derwent any change of nature by its resurrection. 
Too great a chauge of properties would indicate a 
change of substance: it was still gross and earthly, 
and identical with that deposited in the sepulchre. 
Its alternate visibility and invisibility, and its in- 
stantaneous transit from place to place must be ac- 
counted special miracles. It is not necessary to be- 
lieve that being flesh and bone it passed through 
solid matter as a closed door: being invisible it 
probably entered unperceived when the door was 
opened for another. 

It must be borne in mind that the resurrection 
took place without the closing or the healing of any 
of the wounds. The heart was still in its ruptured 
condition : it lay a disabled engine ; the chest, which 
by its alternating action inhales the fuel for the 
internal fire and exhales the ash, lay with its pierced 
and gashed diaphragm like a broken cylinder; the 
blood, which visits every portion of the frame re- 
moving the waste and supplying the fresh material, 
and is properly the life of the whole, was wholly 
lacking: and the body was a total wreck. Yet with- 
out the closing of a wound, or the correction of an 
abnormal condition it was re-endued with life. To 
the human understanding it seems as possible for 
God to speak life into a mass of inorganic matter, 
or a statue as into a body whose intricate ma- 



143 



chinery was so deranged, and the connection of the 
various parts for harmonious working was so dis- 
solved, and not readjusted. 

In the entire absence of blood from the person r 
no heart was longer needed for its propulsion 
through the system, nor were lungs longer required 
for its aeration, indeed respiration itself was no 
more necessary, but was carried on at will, and as 
occasion demanded. 

So inspiration speaks of it as displaying the 
power of God in the highest degree, and as showing 
"the exceeding greatness of his power." In the res- 
urrected body of Jesus life did not depend upon the 
ingenious and effective arrangement of the vital 
forces as in men, but upon its continued and in- 
separable union with that Being who is "Life" in its 
essence, infinite, inexhaustible and eternal. "It was 
impossible that he should be h olden of death." 
This resurrection of the Christ is a demonstation of 
God's ability to reproduce any and every human 
body that has ever lived, as he can endue with life 
a clod of clay or a heap of dust, and call things 
that are not, and they are. 

The ascended body of the Lord still bears the 
gaping wounds, still carries the deranged conditions 
just as they were when it was laid in the tomb. 
Great tufts are missing from the beard, torn out by 
violence and from the roots; marks of the thorny 
crown may still be on the brow, and long furrows 
ploughed upon his back by the cruel scourge may 
possibly yet be traced. Every lesion received during 



142 



the passion left its indelible imprint upon his per- 
son, to be a study and a wonder in the distant 
ages of the future. Eev. v:l. John says: "I saw 
in the midst of the throne and of the four beasts 
and of the four and twenty elders a lamb as it had 
been slain." He carries the fresh marks of slaugh- 
ter in heaven, and his appearance may remain un- 
changed throughout eternity. 

The eleven disciples and their associates had all 
the evidence of the real, bodily presence of Jesus 
with them, that any of us have of the presence of 
our friends. The proof was of the same kind that 
convinces us all of the existence of an external world, 
and of other beings beside ourselves. It is generally 
considered to be an actual demonstration. The 
identification of the person was complete; the five 
open wounds determined that point. Their senses 
were perfectly satisfied, as they came into direct 
personal contact with him. They were challenged 
to examine his hands, his feet and his side, a per- 
mission of which they undoubtedly availed them- 
selves at once. Every facility of investigation was 
granted until unbelief itself upon its knees confessed, 
"my Lord and my God." 

Their minds were convinced as they listened with 
burning hearts to him "who spake as never man 
spake." The only addition to this testimony that 
can possibly be suggested relates to the number of 
witnesses privileged to receive it. It was in the 
power of our Lord to overwhelm his rejectors by 
the open, undeniable display of his risen person; but 
such was never his method. Such procedure would 



143 



have left no room for the exercise of faith. Faith 
in God's testimony is the regenerating factor in the 
human soul. God demands a degree of receptivity 
in the minds of those to whom he appeals by the 
statement of simple truth. He is not seeking a com- 
pulsory conviction. To believers God will grant the 
full assurance of conviction. "To him that hath 
shall be given," as these disciples had absolute 
certainty. 



144 



CHAPTER IX. 



Resurrection of Jesus. The Witnesses. 



That the risen Savior should be exhibited before 
only a limited number of witnesses is in accordance 
with his method in all his mighty works. They 
were most of them performed in the absence of the 
crowd. Two or three witnesses are the stipulated 
number as sufficient to establish any fact by testi- 
mony. Our Lord suffered more spectators when it 
was unavoidable, but evidently preferred the pres- 
ence of fewer. It was not to be expected that he 
would show himself before those whose accusations 
he would not answer by the slightest notice, and 
who blinded their own eyes against the most potent 
light. The certainty of his resurrection was ad- 
mitted by his friends only after the most cautious 
and hesitating examination. Let the witnesses be 
heard. 



145 



The first was Mary Magdalene. It is plain that 
an excited imagination had nothing to do with the 
appearance of her lost master, for she anticipated 
no such occurrence, and her fancy was not busy 
with the thought of seeing him. The idea of a 
resurrection was not in her mind at all. She had 
come with others to complete the burial arrange- 
ments by swathing first the limbs separately, and 
afterwards the whole frame in linen cloths filled 
with pulverized spices and ointments. None of the 
ordinary attendants of a decent interment had been 
allowed. Her woman's heart demanded the tender- 
est care of the dead, and that nothing should be 
omitted which could gratify their sympathy and 
love, that their leave-taking might be enjoyed in all 
the luxury of Oriental grief expressed in the loud 
and piteous wailings of broken hearts. 

She is spoken of as a person of character and 
influence and seems to have been rather a leader 
among the women who followed Jesus : at least her 
name in every instance is mentioned first when sev- 
eral women are named; and this notwithstanding 
her previous life of vice in which also she had been 
a leader. 

She undoubtedly possessed the qualities which 
would have given her the lead in any company in 
which she might have moved. 

The Niagara river above the falls has a suck 
for two or three miles above the cataract that 
dooms everything, man or beast, that falls into the 
stream, there being no possibility of rescue or es- 

-10 



146 



cape. Hell has a suck of farther reach. She had 
been in the suck, and had been carried by it to the 
very brow of the mighty cataract and had looked 
into the pit which was waiting to engulf her. Jesus 
had taken her as a brand from the eternal burn- 
ings. She was capable of an intensity of love and 
it was centred on Jesus. 

No better or more trustworthy witness could 
have been selected, for she was a woman of a splen- 
did and uncommon type. 

Her conduct compares favorably with that of 
the other women when addressed by an angel. The 
other band of women, thrown into a nutter of fear, 
tied precipitately. Mary was not in the least dis- 
turbed, but responded in as cool and self-possessed 
a manner as if addressed by a mortal. 

Her conduct also contrasts to her advantage 
with that of the eleven men when first face to face 
with their risen Lord, though they had been pre- 
pared for the meeting by the testimony not only of 
the women, but by that of the two disciples re- 
turned from Emmaus, and also by that of Peter, 
fresh from his presence. Yet when he stood in their 
midst with his ordinary salutation ''peace be unto 
you," "they were terrified and affrighted." She was 
seemingly a stranger to fear. Courage is not con- 
fined to the sterner sex. Women, soldiers by stealth, 
have participated in the bloodiest battles, and un- 
flinchingly exposed themselves to the gravest per- 
sonal dangers, rivaling the bravest men. Such was 
Mary Magdalene. She had in her the stuff of w 7 hich 
heroes are made; and with this heart of iron she 



147 



united a most affectionate disposition. A stern 
superiority to fear, and a capacity for the tender- 
est affection are sometimes not often conjoined in 
the same character. Indeed reckless love had been 
her soul's undoing. At the outset of her career, 
perhaps more sinned against than sinning, she had 
taken a fearful revenge upon society; but a woman's 
heart never beat more warmly in a female breast 
than in hers. Her attempt to clasp her risen master 
in her arms when first recognized, was characteristic 
of the person, and shows how utterly devoid 
of superstitious fear she was. 

Unequaled power of fascination combined with 
youth, wit, beauty, high spirits and a daring reck- 
lessness of disposition, had made her a potent factor 
in the hands of the great adversary of souls; until 
she had come to take a fiendish delight in her suc- 
cess in the ruin of purity and virtue in those of 
her own sex, as well as of the other. Like Satan 
she triumphed in the propagation of evil, until she 
merited the description of a seven-fold possession ; a 
phr ase to be interpreted figuratively, as it was undenia- 
bly so used by the Master at least once, Matt, xii :43-45. 
She gloated over the ruin she had wrought, a work 
in which she had been seven-fold more successful. 
But a more finely constituted nature originially is 
not often found; she had the qualities which could 
have made her an extraordinarily superior woman; 
but which, when debased and devoted to the prop- 
agation of evil, enabled her to accomplish a vast 
deal. With the fascinating power of the serpent, 
she united the malice of the old serpent, whose will- 
ing tool she ever was. 



148 



The Lord, the infallible judge, has given her the 
high preeminence of being the first witness of the 
most amazing event in the world's history; and her 
testimony is equivalent to that of the strongest 
minded man, as she was exceptionally cool and 
self-possessed at the time, and anticipated no such 
occurrence as actually took place. The church has 
always believed that she was the penitent woman 
in the house of Simon at Nain, because her name 
first enters the history at that point; yet with some 
mixture of doubt, arising from the statement that 
she had been possessed by seven devils. 

II. The twelve apostles were witnesses. These 
were naturally gifted men; each preeminently fitted 
for the arduous work which he afterward accom- 
plished. They stand on the same elevation with 
prophets of the old dispensation, with equal author- 
ity as Moses, Elijah, Isaiah, etc. The two bodies, 
prophets and apostles, form twin constellations in 
the same sky. The names of the twelve apostles 
stand inscribed on the twelve courses in the founda- 
tion of the city of God, the new Jerusalem. Rev. 
xxi:14. They are men for all time, and representa- 
tive men. Peter stands for the impulsive class. His 
name stands engraved by the finger of God on the 
foundation of jasper, a stone of blood-red color, 
streaked with patches of white, perhaps emblemat- 
ical of the ardent, impetuous, loving class ; Andrew, 
who shows how faith in Jesus strengthens and pur- 
ifies the ties of nature; James, son of Zebedee, pres- 
ident of the first Christian council ; John, his brother, 
a philosopher by nature ; Bartholomew, supposed to 



149 



be identical with Nathanael, a man "without guile," 
enemy of all duplicity; Matthew, the accurate ac- 
countant and business man; James the less, sur- 
named in Jerusalem "The Just," author of an epistle, 
a wholly practical man ; Philip, whose name occurs 
in the history of the acts, ardent, zealous and a man 
of strong affections; Thomas, the doubter and a 
pessimist; Jade, whose remaining scrap shows him 
an enemy of formalism and hypocrisy; Simon, the 
Canaanite, a political reformer; Lebbens, of whom 
nothing is known beside the name; Judas Iscariot, 
an ambitious scheemer, but one of the strongest 
witnesses for his master's innocence and truth. 
These were unlearned and common men, the learn- 
ing of the day being superficial and misleading. 

A jury of twelve good men and true, familiar 
with all the testimony in any case, and able to agree 
unanimously in a verdict according to the best of 
their knowledge and belief, is considered competent 
to determine authoritatively any question of fact. 
On this matter of the resurrection of their master, 
they must be allowed to be impartial judges, for all 
were previously inclined to an adverse decision. 
Instead of being ready to grasp at, and embrace 
the idea of his veritable return to life, they all repelled 
and rejected the announcement without inquiry or 
examination. 

These disciples had been "offended because of 
him," scandalized by the sufferings he had been 
made to undergo, which they were not able to un- 
derstand or interpret; and they had been tempted 
to renounce him utterly. 



150 



In the defense of the righteous God had shut the 
mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, opened 
the sea for a way of escape, while it drowned their 
pursuers, protected his prophets by chariots of fire 
and horses of fire, and if his servants had been 
abandoned to martyrdom like the three Hebrew 
children, the angel of the covenant had stood with 
them in the furnace, and made them more than 
conquerors. 

In the case of Jesus all this had been re- 
versed. His sufferings are the greatest anomaly 
in all history. That the only sinless being in the 
whole, course of time should die accursed of God, 
forsaken, killed by sheer agony to which the tor- 
ture of the cross was not to be compared, was to 
them inexplicable, and calculated to distract their 
minds with the most painful doubts of their master: 
and Satan was busy with his sieve. 

The sufferings of Jesus can never be interpreted, 
until they are understood to have been vicarious, 
and inflicted by the great ruler whose alone it is to 
punish sin. All that was by the rage of man in- 
flicted was as nothing compared with the anguish 
revealed in his dying cry "Eli, Eli lama, sabach- 
thani." It is not astonishing that the disciples 
were bewildered. That each one had at least as 
firm a conviction of the immaculate innocence and 
divine purity of their lord and master as Judas 
possessed, will not be questioned : and his fate seemed 
to contradict the conception of a just and holy 
ruler of the universe, who presided over the affairs 
of men. 



151 



Never had men been more dazed by an adverse 
issue of events than these men by the death of their 
master; the torpor of their memory and their men- 
tal faculties proves that the blow received by them 
had been a killing one. All had lost hope so far as 
not to be willing to listen to any report favorable to 
their former fond anticipations: one had seemingly 
forsaken the company of his fellows, and they had 
forgotten about the third day as being the decisive 
day of determination, when the sun, long hidden be- 
hind clouds of Tartarean density, should again show 
himself master of the sky. Two of their company 
were found upon the road upon that day on busi- 
ness not urgent. 

Considerations of their own safety occupied their 
minds; their leader had been executed as an enemy 
to the government, and their own arrest had been 
contemplated as accomplices; a class for whom in 
that day there was no prospect of lenient treat- 
ment, and the apprehension of danger was a pow- 
erful incitement to them to avoid further com- 
plications. 

They must have learned that the sepulchre had 
been placed under military guard until the third day 
had been passed. The removal of the massive stone, 
dispersion of the guard and the disappearance of 
the body demonstrated the presence on the scene of 
a superior force. It was impossible to conceive of 
any human party that could possibly feel a desire 
to get possession of the corpse of a crucified male- 
factor. The conclusion seemed inevitable that a 
divine intervention had taken place. The disciples 



152 



would have perceived this, had not fear paralyzed 
their souls. That they were painfully apprehensive 
is evident from the fact of their assembling for the 
evening meal with the doors locked "for fear of the 
Jews." But appearances were well calculated to 
bring to mind the predictions of a resurrection, 
which they had so often heard. 

Now let the reaction in the minds of these men 
be considered. All at once they are aroused from 
their lethargy, and become bolder than lions. The 
mighty captains of this bloody earth none of them 
exceed them in the display of the loftiest courage, 
which is the wonder of the ages since. Why should 
not their word be belived? They give the world 
not the best of their knowledge and belief, but the 
assurance of indubitable certainty confirmed by 
many infallible proofs, such as are the water-marks 
of the divine sanction; and they sign their verdict 
not with ink, but with their hearts' best blood. One 
only escaped martyrdom, and he by miracle, if 
tradition is to be credited. 

Their risen Lord had afforded them evidence of 
every kind that could be asked by unbelief. He re- 
mained on earth for forty days in round numbers, 
forty-two in fact, being present with them for seven 
whole days if not more, in which they enjoyed the 
privilege of seeing, hearing and even handling him, 
and of examining the wounds of the crucifixion. 
He ate and drank with them. 

« His partaking of gross earthly food was a 
demonstration before their eyes that his body was 
still gross earthy matter, and that his stomach had 



153 



not been touched by the soldier's spear. True, no pulse 
throbbed in his arteries, no blood coursed in his 
veins; yet these men had infallible proofs beiore which 
every doubt was swept away by irresistible conviction. 
Their testimony was given at the peril of their 
lives. And how was it given? The vacillating Peter, 
in the path of a desolating torrent of opposition, 
stood like a mighty rock against which the waves 
of passion dashed only to break; the eleven formed 
a rampart of adamant. 

In their experience during the forty days atfer 
the resurrection, the apostles had learned that Jesus 
when invisible was as really present as at other 
times. He effected the miracles : he it was who sent 
instant judgement on Ananias and Sapphina, not suf- 
fering a harmless lie upon the lips of any of his 
professed followers. 

This was a most threatening warning to them 
to speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing 
but the truth. It made the church at once "clear 
as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners/' 
How could Peter, after having been made the exe- 
cutioner of the death sentence on the falsifiers, him- 
self give false testimony respecting the resurrection, 
and make himself a worse liar than Ananias, speaking 
harmful lies in the name of the Lord? and that in 
the very presence of the master? A lie seems to be 
more abhorrent to the divine nature than other 
transgressions, as being the prolific seed of all sin. 

But the truth had such possession of these men, 
and the presence of Jesus was so vividly realized by 
them as to forbid the temptation to add to or 



154 



diminish ought from the straight forward truth ; 
and as we read their words remaining to our day r 
they seem free from human infirmity, as they are 
free from human passion entirely. Jesus himself 
was speaking through them. He made their testi- 
mony his own, sanctioning it by signs and wonders 
and mighty works, such as the wonders of the 
pentecost and the miracles that followed. The signs 
enumerated in Mk. xvi:7-8 "In my name shall they 
cast out devils, they shall speak with new tongues, 
they shall take up serpents, and if they drink any 
deadly thing it shall not hurt them, they shall lay 
hands on the sick and they shall recover," were 
still occurring when Peter wrote or dictated these 
words, or they had never been recorded; and they 
continued to follow during the life-time of the apos- 
tles; and they were a continual confirmation of 
their testimony. 

The minds of the apostles were at length dis- 
abused of errors which had clung to them during 
their whole connection with their teacher. They 
had never realized his actual personality: they be- 
lieved him to be the Son of God in a sense. Had they 
known who and what he was, Peter would never have 
denied him; the disciples had never forsaken him 
and fled, leaving him alone in the hands of the ene- 
mies; they would have contended for the honor of 
suffering with him, more zealously than they ever 
contended who should be the greatest in his king- 
dom. Had they but known that he was "the mighty 
God, the father of eternity," their conduct had been 
different. He is commonly designated the second. 



155 



person of the Godhead. He is not second in power 
and glory, and his name in some passages stands 
first in the enumeration of the persons. 

He is the executive person, creating all things 
visible and invisible, Col. L:16: maker of the material 
universe and of the spiritual, as well, of the angelic 
"thrones and dominions and principalities and 
powers." "He is before all things and by him all 
things consist," he is "upholding all things by the 
word of his power," Heb. 1:3. Upholding is a far 
greater exercises of power than creating, being as it 
were a continued creation. "He was with God" before 
"one thing was made that was made," "the first 
and the last, the alpha and the amga, the begin- 
ning and the ending." 

He opens the seals of the book of the divine de- 
crees, and executes them as respects this earth by 
the ministration of angels. 

His humanity impressed his followers more than 
his divinity did. They knew him to be a man in all 
respects, sin excepted, suffering human toils, feeling 
human sympathies, manifesting human moods and 
passions, joying, grieving, astonished, angered, 
agonizing, pitying even to tears, and they thought 
that they understood him. 

He was not regarded by them in a true light 
until his ascension to heaven. As he was blessing 
them, standing on the eastern slope of Olivet, a new 
light began to beam from his person, his eyes took 
on a depth and a flame before unseen, the trans- 
figuration glory began to appear, as he slowly 
moved away from them towards his throne in the 



156 



skies. A new light shone into their souls just then : 
they were relieved of their false conception of his 
work. The worldly kingdom, the expectation of 
which had been born with them, vanished like the 
unsubstantial fabric of a dream. 

It had been like a huge cataract upon each eye, 
obstructing the view of him in his real character. 
Minds, that dwarfed his mission to the mere found- 
ing of a worldly dynasty, could by no means ap- 
preciate the real dignity of his person, and the 
magnitude of his work. There fell from their eyes 
as it had been scales, and for the first time they 
knew him. 

When Sir Isaac Newton attempted to verify his 
newly discovered law of gravitation by applying it 
to the moon, and sat down to calculate the dis- 
tance the body should be drawn from a tangential 
line in one second of time, by a force operating in- 
versely as the square of the distance from the earth, 
to make it travel in a slightly oval curve around 
the primary, and began to see that his law would 
correctly interpret the movements of the satellite, 
he was so overcome that he had to call in a friend 
to complete the computation, while he took his 
bed. The revelation of religious truth, on the con- 
trary, communicates an intensity of joy, which 
strengthens and enthuses the soul, and stimulates 
all the spiritual energies. So when these men saw 
the whole gospel truth in its full-orbed glory, they 
could no more be silenced by the command of men, 
than the thunder or the whirlwind could be con- 
trolled by the voice of mortals. It is impossible to 



157 



believe that these men were the dupes of their own 
fancy. The record shows at every step an aston- 
ishing dullness and slowness of perception and con- 
viction which had their guilty origin in a complete 
alienation from their leader and Lord, whom they had 
well nigh given up. Their faith seemed utterly to 
fail: the extinguished wick still smoked; and that 
was all; at the very last the new light revealed 
everything; and the truth lifted them above all- 
hesitation, and filled them with a courage uncon- 
querable. 

In considering the apostolic testimony, it is to 
be remembered that there was a company, many of 
whom had been familiar with the new movement 
from its beginning, and adhered still. The number 
of the names, male and female, was a hundred and 
twenty. The two who went to Emmaus on the third 
day were of this party, but neither of them an 
apostle; yet they were the first among the men to 
behold the Master's risen form. They as well as their 
associates had been "offended because of him," i. e., 
scandalized by the sufferings which he had been 
made to endure, when it seemed indeed that God 
had forsaken him. They had been wholly unable to 
reconcile the treatment which he had received with 
the superintending providence of a holy and right- 
eous God. 

As they slowly walked and reasoned of the 
tragedy he himsell joined them, asking sympatheti- 
cally the cause of their sadness. He was disguised 
as a stranger visiting the holy city from abroad in 
a foreign dress. Mk. xvi:12, "in another form;" his 
externals were different from the usual. 



158 



As to the ordinary dress which Jesus wore, 
Dr. Edersheim has made a valuable suggestion, that 
it consisted of five articles, of which each of the 
four soldiers who took part in the execution took 
one piece, leaving the fifth to be disposed of by lot. 
The outfit of an Arab this day consists of five in- 
dispensable articles. They can be enumerated with 
tolerable certainty; they were the inner vesture the 
"chiton," which in this case was a valuable garment, 
being without seam and of one piece; the girdle which is 
one of the principal parts of oriental attire, being twen- 
ty feet or more in length, the fabric beiug of the width of 
nearly two feet and being doubled lengthwise. It is 
tightly wound around the body several times, and im- 
parts an incalculable support and strength to the 
person; the outer coat; and the sandals. These 
make four necessary articles of apparel. The fifth 
must have been a head-dress. That this resembled 
the Arab "kefiyeh" worn at the present day or per- 
haps was identical with it, is probable. The kefiyeh 
is a piece of embroidered cloth three or four feet 
square thrown over the head, and hanging down to 
the waist behind, being confined in its position by a 
fillet passing around the head and crossing the fore- 
head just above the eyes. The Savior was blind-folded 
in the high priest's court, and if he wore such a 
head-dress, blind-folding coufd have been effected by 
throwing the loose hanging portion over his head 
so as to veil his face; and it could have been done 
without laying hands on him, and without the use 
of force. It is quite certain that this kind of head- 
dress was a part of his ordinary apparel. 



159 



He appeared to these two as a Jew from Baby- 
lonia probably, a great Jewish centre, clothed in 
Babylonish apparel, a loose flowing robe and the pecu- 
liar Chaldean headdress. The disguise was complete, 
as the robe added to his apparent stature, and aided 
in concealing his pierced feet. Their question of sur- 
prise at his ignorance is better translated: "Art thou 
the only stranger in Jerusalem, and hast not known 
the things that have taken place there in these days?" 
and it proves the disguise to have been perfect. 

He showed tnem however from their own scrip- 
tures that the abhorrence of the nation, their re- 
jection of him, the unparallelled abuse, and the for- 
saking by the Father were in accordance with, and 
in literal fulfillment of the foregoing predictions; and 
that the grossest barbarities inflicted on him had 
been expressly named in the prophetic books: the 
offering of vinegar and gall, the disjointing of his 
limbs, the piercing of his side, the very words of the 
mockers, and the frown and forsaking of God. The 
scripture explanation of his sufferings particularly 
was made plain, that they were for the sins of the 
world. This great truth makes "hearts to burn" 
yet. Arrived at Emmaus they constrained him to 
abide with them, pleading the lateness of the hour. 
When the evening meal was prepared, he uninvited 
took the head of the table, pronounced the blessing 
in his own inimitable manner, and breaking the bread 
after his characteristic way, displayed his pierced 
hands; and they knew him: he however vanished 
out of their sight without rising from his place. 



160 



The movements of the eleven disciples on the 
memorable first day of the week can easily be made 
out from hints in the history. They were unques- 
tionably awakened at very early dawn by the shock 
of earthquake which accompanied the appearance 
of the angel at the sepulchre. They did not, how- 
ever, connect it with their master as Mary Mag- 
dalene and her companions did: the earthquake at 
the instant of his decease having been the most re- 
markable occurrence of the kind in all history, and 
unmistakably connected with his death. None of 
them went out in consequence, so far as we know- 
By sunrise, or shortly after, they heard the re- 
port of the women who had seen him. They doubt- 
less sent out hastily two to the places indicated by 
the women, where he had shown himself, to investi- 
gate and satisfy themselves of the truth. When 
these messengers returned with the announcement 
that he was not to be seen there or in the neigh- 
borhood, the conclusion was that the women were 
mistaken, and had deceived themselves. Their re- 
port was at once regarded "as idle tales/' 

It is beyond dispute that the risen Jesus might 
have entered the guilty city, and have surprised his 
stricken followers by the sight of his person before 
they had left their lodging place; but the whole day 
elapsed first. 

The delay was intended to demonstrate the 
stubbornness of their unbelief, and perhaps that 
they no longer wished to be associated with his 
cause. They had not believed the women, nor the 
two returned from Eramaus, though they knew the 



161 



body was missing from the tomb. At the first interview 
Thomas was not present, but the other disciples 
had all adopted his policy : "except I see in his hands 
the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print 
of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, I 
will not believe." Thomas himself was not more 
determined in his unbelief than was every man of 
them. Therefore the Lord shortly challenged them to 
handle him until their satisfaction was complete; and 
that the world might know through them the in- 
fallible certainty of the great truth. 

When the disciples assembled on the evening of 
the day on which their Lord arose, the demonstra- 
tive Peter was ready with the story of an interview 
with his risen Savior. The impression of the graci- 
ous visit still lingered on his features, and there was 
an immense rebound in his heart. The two returned 
from Emmaus arrived later, and with souls still 
burning with the flame of a new revelation, re- 
counted their adventure with the mysterious stranger 
"neither believed they them." Their account wa& 
listened to. In each case the spectre had vanished 
into thin air, and left no trace behind. He appeared 
just as angels do, whom no one sees come or go. 
The matter was thoroughly discussed, and it was 
agreed, not to recognize an unsubstantial apparition 
as their risen master, and that no appearance, how- 
ever resembling him in personal accidents, could be 
regarded as his resurrected body, unless it was 
proved to be flesh and bone by actual handling. 

» 
—11 



162 



They had all adopted the position of Thomas, and 
decided that they would not believe without evidence 
that would leave no room for doubt. 

Just at this juncture when this conclusion had 
been reached, the risen Jesus appeared, standing in 
the open centre of the table which occupied three 
sides of a square, within reach of every hand; and 
required them all to handle him to their full con- 
viction and satisfaction, which they did with fear and 
hesitation. To demonstrate that his body was still 
gross and earthy, he asked for a portion of the 
food remaining on the table, and ate it before their 
eyes. He exercised invisibility at will; but the resur- 
rection had in no respect changed the qualities of 
the matter composing his frame. His plan was to 
manifest himself openly to his believing followers 
(and to no others) until every doubt had vanished. 
The hostile w T orld had no rights in the case. 
Also in the internal condition of the sepulchre 
there must have been something confirmatory. 
The angel called the attention of the women to 
the place where the Lord lay, as meriting their 
inspection. Afterwards the apostle John entered 
the chamber and "saw and believed." The bed must 
have been on the floor; as afterwards two angels 
sat one at the head and the other at the feet 
where the body had lain. Had it been deposited 
upon a niche or shelf, such a position would 
have been impossible. The pulverized spices had 
been placed upon the rocky floor, an excessively 
liberal supply, sufficient for the burial of a king, 



163 



and being spread out and smoothed, formed a bed 
on which a large, clean, white sheet of linen was 
put, with a bundle of bandages for the limbs, which 
were not used for lack of time; but may have been 
utilized for a pillow. On this bed the body was 
placed. When Peter entered the tomb, this remained 
in its first position just as the Savior left it on 
arising. He saw the cloths "lying by themselves" 
on the spicy bed, i. e. without the body: just as the 
couch would appear from which a man had arisen. 
The handkerchief which had supported ana confined 
his chin was deposited at the side of the sepulchre. 
Of the numbers who within a few days confessed 
him, no one had seen the risen Jesus, but thousands 
doubtless had visited the tomb, which was a silent 
but real witness that neither friend nor foe had dis- 
turbed the body; but that the sleeper had of his 
own inherent vigor resumed the life temporarily laid 
down. The bed bore the perfect impress of his per- 
son even to the marks of the wounds, stamped by 
the ooze issuing from them. 

The last testimony to be cited is that of the early 
church, expressed in the Apostles' Creed. In it the 
primitive church utters its convictions of the truth 
as originally received from the apostles. The last 
clause of this creed reads: "I believe in the resur- 
rection of the body, and the life everlasting." 
Whence did the church obtain this article of faith? 
Heathen writings are full of disquisitions upon a 
future state; philosophers uttered volumes about 
it; but the idea of the resurrection of the body 
never entered the mind of the boldest speculator of 



164 



them all. There is nothing in experience or analogy 
to suggest it ; it is contrary to both reason and ex- 
perience. The thought of its possibility was never 
born ; no reasonings could ever inspire the slightest 
anticipation of it. He who dreamed it would have 
been accounted a madman. The simple announce- 
ment of it by Paul set the Athenian Areopagus wild 
with derision. Haughty reason would even now 
pronounce it contrary to first principles. 

Whence has the Christian world obtained its be- 
lief in the resurrection of the body? and that the 
same, which was sown in God's garden, will reap- 
pear in the harvest of the future? It is evidently 
a matter of pure revelation, undiscoverable by human 
genius. 

This revelation was made when, on the third 
day after the burial of Jesus, a mighty angel de- 
scended like a flaming meteor to the tomb of Joseph, 
about which God had his guards, as well as the 
Jewish rulers. Jerusalem was shaken with a "very 
great earthquake," as his feet touched the ground. 
"For fear of him, the keepers did shake, and became 
as dead men." A man paralyzed with fear does not 
fall to the ground; but stands rigid as a statue, 
incapable of motion, or cry, and almost of breath. 
A wave of the angel's hand beckoned the stone 
away ; on which he sat, with eyes flaming with such 
indignation as heaven felt at the murder of Calvary. 
His robes were of such white as earth could not 
soil. As he faced the guard, every eye was riveted 
on him. Had the ground yawned behind them, they 
would not have known it. They saw only the eyes 



165 



•of fire. This angel was only the porter; his office 
was simply to open the door; not to resuscitate 
the dead. One lay in that tomb, whom it was im- 
possible that death should hold. It is an inexpli- 
cable wonder that he died, the lord of life. He laid 
down his life, and he took it again ; he had the 
power. 

He arose as leisurely as men arise from the 
couch of sleep, unrolled the bandages that wrapped 
his frame; took off the towel that bound his chin; 
folded it and laid it by itself apart; left the impress 
of his body upon the bed of spices, on which it had 
been deposited; and the ooze of his wounds upon 
the cloth that had enwrapped him. Without de- 
ranging the couch of his repose, and without haste 
he was gone; and no eye had seen him. The light- 
nings that burned in the sockets of those spirit 
eyes, were too threatening to allow attention to the 
sepulchre, or a look towards any other object. The 
guards saw nothing else. The great forerunner left 
the grave a triumphant victor; he broke the path, 
which all his people shall tread. He left evidences 
of another life stronger than words. When all was 
over, the spirit guard faded out of view, and retir- 
ing into the sepulchre, showed himself to the friends 
of Jesus as gentle and tender as he had been terri- 
ble to his enemies. 

This was revelation or rather demonstration. 
Let reason pronounce as absurd the idea of the re- 
gathering of the scattered dust; let her pile up dif- 
ficulties and impossibilities; the faith of mankind 
will never waver, Jesus has arisen. The same body 



166 



retaining the wounds of the cross, and the gash in 
the side, only etherealized, came back to a life in- 
finitely above the earthly. It was not a spiritual 
body until the ascension. This was the great sign, 
on which our Lord rested his reception; it was the 
climax of miracle. Mighty as had been his works, 
they were subordinate and inferior. This exhibited 
"the exceeding greatness of his power;" by it he was 
"declared to be the son of God with power." 

A doctrine is connected with it. If he died for 
sin, men are sinners; if he rose from the dead men 
shall rise; if his body was changed, and he ascended ; 
his people shall follow. Corruption shall be changed 
into incorruption ; weakness, dishonor and shame 
into glory. As certainly as he was with us in his 
humiliation and sorrows, shall his people be with 
him in victory over death and the grave, and in 
eternal glorj^. Dying Christian, do terrors surround 
you? Look up like Stephen, Jesus is bending over 
you to receive your departing spirit. Church of the 
living God, art thou in straits and reduced to de- 
spair? Jesus still lives; he is in every storm that 
assails you; and though the waves may threaten 
to engulf your bark, not a hair of your head shall 
perish without his permission. 



167 



CHAPTER X. 



The Resurrection of Jesus. Vision Theory 
Examined. 



No historical fact is more overwhemingly demon- 
strated than the resurrection of our Lord on the 
third day after his consignment to the tomb. His 
body had been mangled beyond the possibility of 
reanimation: the soldier's spear had pierced to the 
very citadel of life, and opened a channel for the 
exit of the whole mass of his blood already coagu- 
lated in the pericardium: the heart itself was a 
broken vessel ruptured by excessive grief and intol- 
erable agony. The fiction of a return to life from 
natural and inexplicable causes is the grossest ab- 
surdity ever conceived. It is doubtful if galvanic 
energy itself, had it been possible to apply it, could 
ever make a body in this condition even simulate 
life. No mortal eye beheld the movements of Jesus,, 
within the rocky cell, or saw his form as it issued 



168 



from its prison. The soldiers' gaze was monopo- 
lized by the threatening aspect of the supernatural 
being sitting so defiantly upon the stone, which had 
served for a door. He was indeed a seraph "a 
burner," and the inward fire flashed through the 
windows of his countenance, palsying their souls 
with terror. 

When the risen one showed himself to the eleven 
disciples on the evening of that third day, surprised 
at the sudden apparition, they thought that they 
were seeing a spectre: the question in every mind was: 
is this appearance an illusion or is it our veritable 
master? All saw him, heard his voice, and shrank 
from him. When he stretched out his hand toward 
them and said: "handle me and see; behold my 
hands and my feet that it is I myself : a spirit hath 
not flesh and bones as ye see me have," and they 
hesitatingly and with manifest terror slowly com- 
plied, "and yet believed not for joy and wondered," 
he took a portion of the food which they were eat- 
ing and ate it before their eyes, before they were 
fully convinced of his real presence, and that his was 
not a, glorified body, but actual flesh and bone. 

The sense of touch is the most useful of the five 
in correcting the impressions of the eye and ear. 
As the doubting Thomas realized, eye and ear can 
convey false impressions ; the sense of touch corrects, 
decides uncertainties, and is in every doubtful case 
the final arbiter and judge. None hardly appreciate 
how much is owed to this sense. Eye and ear fur- 
nish knowledge of distant objects, but of things im- 
mediately around us and accessible, more is learned 



169 



from contact than from all other sources. The 
blind man learns more about the qualities of an ob- 
ject which he can handle, than the seeing man 
gathers by the boasted sense of sight alone, and in 
some cases by the aid of touch, eye and ear. These 
three senses give us all our knowledge of an external 
world, and we would hardly understand that matter 
existed at all, were we not endowed with this sense 
of touch. 

When a friend is encountered, and we hear his 
voice and grasp his hand, we have all the evidence 
of his real presence that is attainable, and no bet- 
ter proof can be asked or procured. The disciples 
had this amount of proof that their risen Lord 
stood before them : more conclusive evidence is in- 
conceivable. 

Do actual illusions take place, and to what ex- 
tent is there liability to deception ? is an interesting 
inquiry; and a few words on this subject may 
strengthen our belief in the testimony of the apos- 
tles. Illusions are of rare occurrence, not one individual 
in many thousands experiencing them, and in many 
cases they are the result of disease. The senses of the 
human organism are almost uniformly reliable, as 
much so as those of animals. The eyes and ears of 
beasts and birds seem never defective or deceptive. 
God has not given us eyes and ears and touch to 
deceive us. They never deceive unless the system is 
in an abnormal condition. If the physical organism 
is deranged, the perceptions may be misleading and 
their testimony false. 



170 



Disease is fruitful of such phenomena : angel vis- 
ions present themselves around the bed of the dying, 
ravishing and exquisite music is heard, or friends 
of the long ago return to encourage and cheer the 
parting soul. A ministerial friend of the writer en- 
deavored fruitlessly to point out to his sorrowing 
family a glorious messenger come to conduct him 
home to heaven, designating the spot in the room 
where he stood, and the piece of furniture nearest 
to him, and seemed much disappointed when other 
eyes failed to discover him. Were such forms real 
would they not be visible to bystanders? Are 
they not illusions? In other instances an unpleas- 
ant presence seems to haunt the bed of the sufferer, 
and the request is made and repeated, take away 
that black man, it is impossible to rest until he is 
removed. 

Both these classes of illusions may owe their 
origin to diseased conditions of the brain, as do 
confessedly the fancies of the man suffering with 
delirium tremens. 

Dr. Abernethy, of Scotland, relates the case of 
a gentleman under his care a high liver, who was 
afflicted every evening with the visit of an old 
woman who beat him unmercifully with a cane, 
until his whole body was sore from her blows. The 
Doctor dined with him one evening, and noticed his 
gluttonous eating, and his generous use of liquors 
at the table. On retiring to another room he en- 
deavored to entertain his patient by conversation 
on subjects possessing the greatest interest to him,, 
and thus withdraw his attention from the expected 



171 



visit of his tormentor, when in spite of all his efforts- 
the patient suddenly sank to the floor in a fit, ex- 
claiming "there she is, there she is:" the old woman 
was a lusus of his own brain. 

Such .delusions are produced directly by a de- 
ranged condition of the nerves of sensation. To 
any one in a state of perfect health such expe- 
riences are impossible. 

It is neither safe nor wise to repudiate as ab- 
surd, nor to condemn as vagaries and frauds all 
cases of supposed apparitions: the sad suicide of Hugh 
Miller the great Scotch geologist stands as a proof 
that overwork or excessive study, or the wear o^ 
continual worry, by rendering some portion of the 
brain preternaturally sensitive, may lead to false 
perceptions clothed with all the power of absolute 
reality, bringing in their train the most disastrous 
results. 

Luther, with his attention concentrated on one 
thought, in perfect health but suffering from long 
confinement in the Wartburg Castle with no out- 
door life, became the prey of a disordered imagina- 
tion, and saw the devil appearing bodily before 
him. Having no better weapon he assaulted and 
discomfited him with his inkstand; of course any 
figure, that could be dissipated and driven away by 
the dash of an inkstand, was not the devil. It was 
only his fancy. 

Protracted sleeplessness, combined with unre- 
mitted excitement and intense worry, is in many 
instances according to the physicians a chief factor 
in the production of insanity; and may therefore 



172 



be confidently considered as tending to beget hallu- 
cinations of all kinds. The only test, which can 
determine the reality or the falsity of appearances, 
is the sense of touch; if the subject retains self- 
possession sufficient to use it. 

The pious frauds have been numerous in the 
Born an church in past ages, but in some exceptional 
cases have produced lasting results upon the char- 
acter and life of persons, who afterwards became 
eminent. The first religious impressions' of St. 
Thomas of Assisi, then a wild and dissipated youth, 
are said to have been received as he was standing 
before a life-size figure of the crucified Christ. A 
voice came from the parted lips of the image ex- 
horting him to reform his life, consecrate his pos- 
sessions which were large to the church, and devote 
himself to her service. His conversion seems to have 
been genuine, as he gave himself and all he had to 
the work enjoined. St. Theresa had a somewhat 
similar experience, and became noted for charities 
and devotion. The end, however, never justifies the 
means used to accomplish it. 

An instance is furnished in the career of Ignatius 
Loyola, a man of most intense character, who, after 
long confinement indoors in a monastery, necessary 
for the healing of wounds received in battle, had 
his visions, which may have had no origin in fraud, 
but have been entirely the product of his own heated 
imagination. 

If these visions seemed to be real they must have 
been hallucinations. Had the appearances been 
tested by the sense of touch, they might have re- 



173 



vealed their true character as either actual or false, 
and thus have saved the world a vast experience of 
evil. All the instances referred to may be classed 
as examples of illusions from a diseased condition 
of the physical system. Indeed insanity itself, if 
the position of medical experts is correctly under- 
stood, results from a complication of bodily de- 
rangements: the spirit of man being subject to no 
disease except sin, the source of all disorder and 
woe. Had the visions, to which reference has been 
made, been seen by others than the subjects of them 
at the moment of occurrence, or had opportunity 
been afforded to test the supposed personages speak- 
ing or acting, by the sense which God has given us 
for the purpose oi rectifying our impressions of ex- 
ternal objects, and correcting the aberrations of the 
eye or ear, or of both, they had either been proved 
real, or light and airy as the baseless fabric of a 
dream. 

For such lack of verification the Protestant 
world has lost faith in all the pretended revelations 
and visions of Catholic history; without, however, 
denying that these may have been the experiences 
of good and Christian persons, proved to be such 
by the surrender of themselves and all their belong- 
ings for the promotion of the welfare of the race, 
and the service of God. We are wonderfully and 
also fearfully made. The connection between soul 
and body is so abstruse, and the mutual inter- 
infiuence of the two is so subtle and delicate as to 
emphasize the necessity of preserving all the adjust- 
ments which God has made. If "mens sana" is to 



174 



be retained it must be "in corpore sano." Too tight 
a tension of the strings of the harp risks the break- 
ing of some of them. The line of demarkation be- 
tween a healthy mentality and insanity is so dim, 
as to make decision respecting the condition of oc- 
casional dupes difficult, and to inculcate on all the 
necessity of acknowledging only hard and undenia- 
ble facts. Man is more susceptible of imposition in 
religious matters than those of common life; and 
the devil finds in the world an extensive field for 
the exercise of all his ingenuity of deception. 

In some cases illusions are merely dreams, the 
sleeper being unaware that he is asleep. The man 
is yet alive and well known to the writer, now a 
prominent physician in a western city, who at the 
age of twenty, after a day's attendance in a country 
store on a close and sultry day in late summer, 
was riding at its close out of the little town to 
spend the night abroad. The road passed an old 
graveyard within a mile of his destination. His 
horse was walking leisurely along in the hazy even- 
ing; and when the graveyard came in sight, the 
rider beheld with astonishment a figure come out of 
the turnstile clad in a shirt reaching nearly to the 
knees. The figure was a skeleton. The smooth long 
skull, the cavernous sockets where eyes had once 
been, the jaws and teeth uncovered .by lips and 
cheeks, and the bony legs, and perfectly articulated 
feet and toes, were plainly visible and were noted. 
The spook turned down the road to meet the ap- 
proaching horseman, who after observing its regu- 
lar steps for a few moments, in terror wheeled his 



175 m 

horse, at the same time administering a vigorous 
kick. The sudden spring of the animal awakened 
him, and he became aware that he had been dream- 
ing. A glance down the road showed that no figure 
at all was on the highway to obstruct the journey. 
Had the horse also seen the approaching form, it 
might have proved conclusively that something real 
was advancing toward them; but illusions are not 
shared by any company, but are confined to indi- 
viduals. There is little doubt that many of the 
spectres, that have produced fright and terror in 
days past, have existed only in the imagination of 
the dreamer. 

Many such supposed visions have occurred just 
as the dreamer was reposing between waking and 
sleeping, or w T hen he was just waking, and had 
hardly regained full consciousness; and they all 
without exception take place in the night. If the 
power that governs all things permits such commu- 
nications, and himself sends such messengers, he, in 
his consummate wisdom, would send them in the 
€lear light of day to mortals whose faculties were 
all awake. 

Suspicion reasonably rests on all vague, inex- 
act and shadowy revelations of the kind made at 
the times most favorable to imposition from with- 
out, and to deception by one's own senses. Col. 
Gardiner, an English gentleman, a brave military 
officer and afterwards an eminent christian, believed 
to the day of his death that at a certain time as 
he sat nursing by his fire, he saw the once crucified 
Christ at his side, and heard his upbraiding voice. 



176 



His conversion speedily followed. The vision how- 
ever resulted only from his own excited imagina- 
tion, and deeply agitated soul; to him it was ever 
an indisputable reality and had all the effect of a 
reality. It is explicable without the aid of super- 
naturalism. 

A condition of unconscious sleep accounts for 
the vision of Brutus on the battlefield of Pharsalia. 
Sitting alone in his tent with only the dim light of 
a lamp, while the host around him was wrapped in 
slumber, he saw the flap of his tent move, and at 
the opening the well known form of the murdered 
Cesar appeared. Looking intently at Brutus, and 
pointing a threatening finger, he simply said: "I 
will meet you again at Philippi;" and dropped the 
curtain and was gone. Brutus immediately went 
out, and demanded of the sentinel pacing his beat 
before the tent, if any one had passed, or if any 
footsteps or voice had been heard, and the guard 
declared that no mortal had come near, or spoken 
or given any sign of his presence. Brutus consid- 
ered it a fact that he had been visited by the shade 
of the great Julius; and though the prediction was 
verified, and he laid down his life at Philippi, the 
vision was nothing more than a dream suggested 
by a troubled conscience; and the naming of the 
place where the decisive battle was to be fought, 
was but a coincidence. 

Illusions may deceive eyes and ears; but a single 
touch if allowed would dissipate them. However 
many may be present in a company the illusion is 
confined to one: where several perceive the object 



177 



at the same time, it is real. The sight of the risen 
Jesus was shared by several individuals at the same 
time, all of whom recognized the well known form 
and voice, and were permitted to handle him, and 
feel the wouuds made in his flesh by the cruel irons. 

Perhaps there is a lurking regret in the minds 
of some that our Lord confined his appearances 
after his resurrection to so few witnesses, refusing 
the gratification of sight to his numerous adher- 
ents. But it is plain that he advertised to all his 
followers that any, who desired to see him after his 
return from the tomb, might enjoy the coveted 
privilege by resorting at a specified time to a place 
also specified, a mountain in Galilee, a favorite re- 
sort, perhaps the scene of the transfiguration; and 
in consequence more than five hundred men were 
gathered there at the day appointed. If women 
could have enjoyed the occasion, the number in at- 
tendance would have been much larger. When the 
company beheld him what wonder that some 
doubted, when at the first view of him there were 
doubters among the eleven? Doubt must have been 
dissipated, however, when his words were heard, 
words of victory : "Go ye into all the world, preach 
the gospel to every creature, beginning at Jerusa- 
lem" — here where truth has been crushed to earth 
shall it be established firmer than the heaven and the 
earth; and from this centre shall it irradiate the 
world — words of mercy proclaiming forgiveness and 
salvation to guilty Jerusalem first. It was the same 
Jesus who prayed "Father, forgive them, they know 
not what they do." 

-12 



178 



After the terrible ordeal of disappointment fol- 
lowing disappointment through which his friends 
had passed, their wits had been sharpened to a 
keenness of discernment and of suspicious scrutiny, 
that made every one of them a finished detective, 
who could not again be deceived. The reality of 
their master's return to life was a vital point, on 
which hung all their hopes and the hopes of the 
world; the one guarantee which God has given of 
a future immortality, and given to men of all ages. 
Therefore Jesus submitted himself to the closest ex- 
amination by his intimate associates, who were 
competent judges of everything connected with his 
person, and permitted a convincing view of himself 
to all who desired it, until unbelief itself exclaimed : 
"My Lord and my God;" and the world has rested 
on the assurance, which hereafter can never be 
questioned. Man is no longer a mere animal valu- 
able only for the brute strength and skill and cour- 
age which he possesses: he is an undying spirit. 
However rugged may be his form and low his con- 
dition, he is in actual importance and intrinsic value 
the equal of angels, and outweighs all material 
things in preciousness. 

The sun's a spark of transient fire 
'Twill fade from out the sky ; 

The soul immortal as its sire, 
The soul can never die. 

The illusion theory ignores and contradicts the 
stubborn and fundamental facts of the occurrence, 
such as the empty sepulchre, the missing corpse, 
which could not be produced, though left in the 



179 



possession of the enemy in an impregnable chamber 
of rock, under military guard ; the orderly disposi- 
tion of the cloths and handkerchiefs; body snatchers, 
always acting with haste that forbids attention to 
such touches of finish, the dispersal of the guard 
before the time of the watch (sun rise) was out, the 
more than lion-like boldness of the before timid and 
wavering disciples, and their irrepressible aggres- 
siveness, while the party of the opposition was 
cowed by defeat, afraid to enforce their own meas- 
ures, deterred from harming the apostles by a strong 
public sentiment which favored them, surrendering 
their purpose to exterminate Christianity and re- 
treating with the brand upon them of fighting 
against God. Both parties showed by their be- 
havior that the victory was with the Galilean. 

These indisputable facts are the ground work on 
which rests the judgment of the ages. These facts 
form a connected chain of events, satisfying thou- 
sands cognizant of all the steps in the tragedy, and 
present there to explore and judge of the localities. 
Such examination induced multitudes to espouse the 
cause of the rejected and crucified One at the peril 
of all that man holds dear. The testimony of those 
who saw and heard and handled the risen Christ, 
and ate and drank with him during several days is 
in an indirect manner the testimony of God himself; 
the testimony of the human senses in a normal con- 
dition being the witness of the Most High. 

He does not deceive men with sight and hearing 
of unrealities. The suggestion of illusions is a mere 
hypothesis unworthy of the name of a theory; as 



180 



they cannot possibly take place to a company, and 
only occur to individuals, whose experience cannot 
for a moment merit consideration. Facts, hard 
facts alone can substantiate the greatest occurrence 
of time. If the apparition of Jesus were an illusion, 
so also was his ascension, and indeed it might be 
claimed that so also was his ministry, so also might 
be the life of any great man in history, and noth- 
ing real would be left to the world. 

His presence was with the church until it was 
fully organized and launched on the turbulent sea 
of opposition. It belonged to him alone to estab- 
lish its permanent institutions with authority. He 
on the day of Pentecost changed the weekly sabbath 
from the seventh day to the first with an authority 
equal to that which had at first appointed it. 
Though the record of his act is lacking, yet we have 
the statement that his appearances to his eleven 
were confined to that day, that his ascension took 
place on the eve of a sabbath, and that the public 
setting up of his church took place on the Pentecost 
the first day of the week. This selection of the day 
was authentative. Notwithstanding the prejudice 
and superstition in which the seventh day was en- 
trenched, and the resistance of the Jews, Christ's 
appointment has stood as commemorating an event 
more signal and important than the creation of the 
world, the completed work of its redemption. 

He settled the two ordinances of Christianity, 
baptism and the Lord's supper. Baptism in the 
name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost had 
never been heard of before the Lord's death: 



181 



the Lord's supper had been celebrated on the 
night preceding his arrest; but had not been 
ordained as a permanent institution until after his 
resurrection. These arrangements are proof of his 
resurrection. At the appointed time before that 
generation had passed, the sign of the son of man 
in heaven appeared, and all the tribes of the land 
mourned because of him, when they saw the son of 
man coming in the clouds of heaven with power 
and great glory. Titus saw the sign and acknowl- 
edged that he could never have taken the city with- 
out his help. He sent his angels with the loud voice 
of a trumpet, and gathered his elect from the four 
winds; and not a christian perished in the siege of 
Jerusalem. The earth shook when Jerusalem fell. 
There has not been in all history an event that more 
agitated the world, not the fall of the great Napo- 
leon, not one followed by greater and more impor- 
tant results. It established in the minds of all peo- 
ple the mission of Jesus Christ, gave a mighty im- 
pulse to Christianity, settled the first day sabbath, 
and inscribed the fact of his resurrection upon the 
time register of the world. 

"O Galillean thou hast conquered." 
Jesus was virtually with his apostles after his 
ascension as really as before it; and they soon 
learned that his invisible and spiritual presence was 
far more desirable than his presence bodily. He 
shed forth the mighty influences of the Pentecost, 
and gave the tongues of fire; he healed the man 
lame from his mother's womb, just such a sufferer 
as he had always selected while on earth; sent hot 



182 



judgment on Ananias and Sapphira, not tolerating 
among his followers even a termless lie, but requir- 
ing them to stand as true witnesses of the truth, 
and deterring a host of superficial converts from a 
merely nominal confession that the truth was with 
his followers; opened the prison doors and released 
his apostles, encouraging them to still greater bold- 
ness in their testimony; was present at the martyr- 
dom of Stephen to receive his parting spirit, and 
thrust the iron pricks of truth into the heart of the 
leader of the mob; sent Philip to teach and baptize 
the ennuch of Etheopia, and make him the father of 
the church of Abyssinia, and snatched Philip away im-« 
mediately that the ennuch might know that it was 
Jesus himself who had enlightened him, and would 
still lead him; met Saul on the road to Damascus to 
change the lion into a lamb, and the persecutor 
into an apostle. Saul beheld his bodily form as did 
also John in Patmos. 

He was in the same manner with all his apostles, 
directing all the measures taken by them to promote 
his cause. If the whole were told it would be nec- 
essary to quote the whole book of Acts, and the 
whole history of the church since. He has been in 
every fire kindled at the stake as really as he was 
with the three Hebrew children in Nebuchaduezzar's 
furnace; not indeed delivering them, but walking 
with them in the flames. Thousands and tens of 
thousands have been cast to the lions: he has been 
with each as really as he was with Daniel in the 
den at Babylon, and they have realized that his 
spiritual help was more sustaining than could 



183 



liave been a bodily and material presence. There 
is not a true convert in any age in any part 
of the world, with whom he is not present with 
a sensible, glorious presence. He is with his 
church to the end of time, and would be present 
with a greater demonstration if our consecration 
and sacrifice were more entire, if the fear of man 
were not in the way, and if an apostolic boldness 
and enterprise had control of the hearts of his fol- 
lowers. The time may yet come again when he 
shall visibly interfere to inspire his host and its 
leaders. "Who is this king of glory? The Lord 
strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle." 
"He is the King of Glory." 



ONE COPY REC'D 

sep r 



M^^'cra"^ 



fc\ 



